Holiday House Party @ Centaur

Ranee Lee & Centaur Theatre Present

Holiday House Party @ Centaur

Featuring McGill Jazz Performance Students Under the Direction of Jazz Legend Ranee Lee

Kick off the holiday season at the Holiday House Party @ Centaur, featuring the talents of 16 students from McGill’s Jazz Performance program, led by the legendary jazz vocalist Ranee Lee herself. Join us as we reinvent holiday classics with a fresh, jazzy twist! 

This homey evening of holiday music is the perfect way to launch the season of lights. For an exclusive 2-night run taking place December 5 and 6, the next generation of jazz artists will transform Centaur into the perfect place to escape the winter weather and enjoy an evening of music and merriment. Don’t miss these gifted performers—8 singers and 8 instrumentalists—from the McGill Schulich School of Music, all trained by Oscar Peterson Award-winning jazz legend Ranee Lee. Tickets on sale now!

Behind the Scenes – Our musicians are getting ready!

Set List

1. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (Vince Guaraldi; arr. Ryan Bennett)
2. “Winter Wonderland” (Felix Bernard, Richard B. Smith; arr. Élizabeth
   Cormier, Maia Prasad)
3. “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year” (Frank Loesser; arr. Sarah Leroux)
4. “Winter Song” (Original) (Yannick Anctil, Maia Prasad)
5. “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm/Let It Snow” – (Irving Berlin/Sammy
   Cahn, Jule Styne; arr. Sarah Boutin)
6. “Christmas Time Is Here” (Vince Guaraldi, Lee Mendelson; arr. Sarah
   Leroux)
7. “Wonderful Christmastime” (Paul McCartney; arr. Seraphina Crema Black)
8. “The Secret of Christmas” (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen; arr.
   Élizabeth Cormier)
9. “Little Drummer Boy” (Katherine Kennicott Davis; arr. Kim Burnell)
10. “The Christmas Song” (Robert Wells, Mel Tormé; arr. Najib Fenaoui)
11. “Carol of the Bells” (Mykola Leontovych, Peter Wilhousky; arr. Bogi Orban-
    Ducos)
12. “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” (Frank Loesser; arr. Najib Fenaoui)
13. “What Child Is This?” (Ralph Vaughan Williams, Thomas Hewitt Jones; arr.
    Ranee Lee, Yannick Anctil)

RANEE LEE

Ranee Lee embodies jazz. Her career has been a relentless pursuit to see where the music would take her, what she could learn, what she could pass on, how she could take new and exciting paths. She accepts challenges and constantly redefines herself. What is indisputable is that she is one of Canada’s premiere jazz vocalists.

Lee has lived in Montreal now for over 50 years, moving from New York in 1970. She’s released 13 acclaimed albums on the Justin Time label, the newest of which is 2022’s Because You Loved Me, her radical, innovative interpretations of songs made famous by another Quebec heroine, Celine Dion. She’s a Juno Award-winner, a songwriter, an award-winning actress, a celebrated educator, and an author of the children’s book Nana What Do You Say? inspired by her song of the same title. 

Ranee’s impressive discography is filled with masterworks: The Musical, Jazz on Broadway, being one of them, was a successful marriage of jazz standards and the music of Broadway. In 1994 and again in1995, Ranee received the Top Canadian Female Jazz Vocalist Award presented by Jazz Report magazine. She has been nominated for several Juno Awards and in 2010 – won the Juno for Vocal Jazz Album of the year for her recording Ranee Lee Lives Upstairs. Her performance as Billie Holiday in the play Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill won her a Dora Mavor Moore.

Throughout her career Ranee has performed with many jazz notables, including Clark Terry, Bill Mayes, Herb Ellis, Red Mitchell, Milt Hinton, Oliver Jones and Terry Clarke, to name a few. Lee is no stranger to the road; she has toured with her own group in the United States and has played at many prestigious jazz festivals throughout Canada as well as Spain, France, England and Haiti. 

For outstanding service to jazz education, at the twenty-first IAJE conference in 1994, Ranee received the International Association of Jazz Educators Award. As an educator, Ranee has been part of the University of Laval faculty in Quebec City and The Schulich School of Music of McGill University faculty for over twenty years. She was appointed as a Member Of The Order Of Canada and in 2007 was given an award for appreciation and contribution to the development of the McGill Jazz Program by the McGill Schulich School of Music.