Broadway comes to Orchestra Iowa’s Holiday Spectacular

Ann Hampton Callaway is one of Tim Hankewich’s favorite artists, and after Callaway performed an Ella Fitzgerald concert with Orchestra Iowa at Coe College in October 2008, Hankewich promised to have her back when the flood-ravaged Paramount Theatre had been restored to its former glory.

He’s making good on that promise, showcasing Callaway a dozen times in Orchestra Iowa’s Holiday Spectacular from Dec. 16 to 18 on the Paramount stage in downtown Cedar Rapids.

“People really need to hear her sing, because she’s the real deal,” Hankewich said by phone from Jacksonville, Fla., where he conducted the Jacksonville Symphony’s Holiday Pops concert Dec. 9 to 11. “There’s not many people who are a full-package entertainer anymore, but she’s one of them.”

If you go

What: Orchestra Iowa: Holiday Spectacular,

Where: Paramount Theatre, 123 Third Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids

When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 16 and 17; 2 p.m. Dec. 18, 2022

Guests: Include jazz vocalist Ann Hampton Callaway, Orchestra Iowa School’s Discovery Chorus and Cedar Rapids Concert Chorale

Tickets: $18 to $59, plus student rates; artsiowa.com/tickets/

Guest artist’s website: annhamptoncallaway.com/

Just reading the bio on Callaway’s website is enough to make your head spin.

“Singer, pianist, composer, lyricist, arranger, actress, educator, TV host and producer. Voted by Broadwayworld.com as ‘Performer of the Year’ and two years in a row as ‘Best Jazz Vocalist.’ ”

The list goes on and on, including a 2000 Tony nomination for her performance in Broadway’s “Swing.” She also wrote and sang the theme song for the ’90s sitcom “The Nanny,” and she made her big screen debut singing “Come Rain or Come Shine” in Robert DeNiro’s 2006 film, “The Good Shepherd,” acting alongside Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon.

She’s won numerous awards for her vocal prowess; recorded her own albums; and has been a guest performer on more than 40 CDs. She’s also written music Barbra Streisand has performed on seven CDs, and has written with such luminaries as Carole King.

If that’s not enough, she’s shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Dr. John, Liza Minnelli, Betty Buckley, Dianne Reeves, Audra McDonald, Harvey Fierstein, Michael Feinstein — and one of her favorite collaborators at home and on Broadway, her sister, Liz Callaway, nominated for a Tony Award for “Baby.”

Holiday programming

Holiday Spectacular audiences will hear her sing orchestral arrangements of familiar songs, as well as two of her original tunes: “Christmas Lullaby,” recorded by both Streisand and Kristen Chenoweth, and “God Bless My Family.”

Both of those songs display the deep love Callaway feels for her family, from happy childhood memories through the lullaby she wrote for her nephew who was so excited one Christmas Eve that “he just could not go to sleep,” Callaway said by phone from her home in Tucson, Ariz. Her nephew is now in his 30s, but she said she sang it to him for years.

She said she loves singing “God Bless My Family” for audiences, “because it’s just so personal and it also moves people so much.” So have a tissue handy.

“When Christmas comes around — we’ve all lost people, and it suddenly becomes a slightly bittersweet thing to remember them as you’re writing Christmas cards,” she said. “So it’s about extending your love to people that are in your life and the people who are in the next world. And it always gets one of the biggest reactions.”

On a lighter note, she’ll move to the piano and do a Christmas improv, creating a song based on words and phrases from the audience. She and Hankewich are pretty quick on their feet with improved dialogue, too, so audiences also may hear some witty banter between the songs.

In the past few years, Orchestra Iowa has welcomed guest artists from pop, cabaret and blues realms. Each one brings a special shimmer to the programming, as well as challenges for stirring voices into the orchestral mix.

“The most underappreciated and most complex part of putting a program together is finding arrangements that fit the artist, not only stylistically but also in terms of licensing and copyright,” Hankewich said.

That’s a task that can’t wait til the last minute.

“It has taken us three months of back and forth, getting arrangements that suit her voice and are cleared through copyright,” he noted, as costs have ramped up. “That’s a rather recent hurdle that orchestras didn’t have to contend with. But in the past 10 years, that has really had a chilling effect on the industry when it comes to Christmas programming.”

A lot of artists like Callaway have their own charts arranged and have already received licensing permission, Hankewich added. But it’s also why he does his own arranging for Holiday Spectacular numbers, too.

“You just can’t pick up music off the shelf and make these programs happen. You have to do it yourself,” he said. “And the fact that I’m doing a program in Jacksonville this week shows that other orchestras are looking at what we do in Iowa with envy.”

Wherever Callaway goes this time of year, she loves doing holiday pops concerts with symphonies, from Philadelphia and Cincinnati, as well as a solo concert with sister Liz in New York’s Carnegie Hall.

“That was a wonderful experience,” she said of that sibling collaboration which also has yielded other Callaway sister acts.

Festive traditions

It’s no wonder Ann and Liz sang their way to stardom. Growing up in Chicago, the daughters of TV and radio journalist John Callaway and singer, pianist and vocal coach Shirley Callaway, the girls were surrounded by music in their home, singing and dancing around the living room and listening to their father’s album collection.

In a 2008 Gazette interview, Callaway said: “We love performing together. We like to think of ourselves as the von Trapp family of Chicago.”

Among their holiday traditions was singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Their parents are now gone, but they still read “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” just like their mother did, and music still is key to their family gatherings.

“We have a lot of fun harmonizing when we’re together at Christmastime,” Callaway said, adding that “the Calloway family favorite is ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ Ironically, we're not doing that in the (Orchestra Iowa) show for some reason. I don’t know why.”

That’s because Theatre Cedar Rapids has been staging its own merry little Christmas, wrapping up a monthlong run of “Meet Me in St. Louis,” in which the wistful ballad is a shining star.

Another favorite she’s not performing in Cedar Rapids is “O Holy Night.”

“I love to sing it as a soprano. It’s just such a majestic, beautiful song,” said Callaway, who is equally at home embracing the lower register of her voice via jazz, blues and Great American Songbook standards.

But she revels in whatever she sings at Christmastime.

“I am sort of known as the Christmas voice — even the New York Times called me ‘the Christmas voice’ — and I used to host the wonderful Yuletide concerts that are put on by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. I would literally do 28 concerts and host the concert and sing tons of songs and do dances and do all this stuff with them. And then if you did that show, the next year you would do 24 concerts in either Naples or Baltimore.

“I have literally had some of my most enjoyable concerts of my life singing holiday songs with great orchestras.

“And then just bringing a lot of spirit to the season, because the one thing I love about holiday music is that everybody knows it. There is no boundary in it. From young to old, everybody knows the same songs.

“It really brings people together and reminds us of important things like love and celebration and peace, and also the sense of festivity and joy — the joy of family and the family of man. I really appreciate getting to celebrate those things.”

She also loves stepping into the many moods of musical styles at the holidays.

“I’m comfortable singing ‘I Wonder as I Wander’ in a soprano voice with a magnificent Steven Reineke arrangement. And then the next minute I’m doing a really jazzy version of ‘Winter Wonderland.’ So people really get a variety show, because I have such a versatile (repertoire). I’m doing a Broadway song, I'm doing swing songs, I'm doing really tender songs.”

Even though performing is her job, it doesn’t feel like work, even though she said, “There’s a lot of work to do a good job of putting on a show. It takes a lot of discipline, organization and work.

“But I always tell people that I live on Earth, and I sing in heaven, because once I get on the stage, there’s nothing more wonderful.

“The love and the energy and the inspiration is so powerful, and I’m just in my happy place. And the chemistry of singing great music for a beautiful audience. And I love being surrounded by an orchestra and the sounds and the soaring the beautiful orchestra can bring, as well as the joyous, celebratory, fun sounds that an orchestra can share,” she said.

“As a singer and a serious musician, it really feels just like heaven. So once I’m on that stage, I am just completely in a sort of a paradise. And I think the audience feels that. I love having fun with my audiences. I love making them sing, I like joking with them, and they never know what’s going to happen next.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com