A very “wintery,” interestingly daring Christmas album, noted jazz vocalist and OBIE Award-winning musical-theatre performer Darius de Haas’s Let Me Carry You This Christmas showcases the singer’s bold explorations of a range of musical styles through a well-curated array of traditional carols and cold-weather songs. De Haas sings with grand emotion. His “involving” style really pulls the listener into the experience of the music, because he allows us to feel how hard he works. He doesn’t aim for that effortlessness prized by many singers, but rather revels in the labor of authentic vocal expression—an approach that, here, aptly calls to mind the harsh, yet exhilarating nature of wintertime cold. Though de Haas adopts various vocal approaches throughout the album—jazz, gospel, spiritual, rock, classical, Broadway, pop—he stays true to who he is as a singer, sometimes only hinting at the varied genres or referencing their defining characteristics.
De Haas hails from a family of prominent jazz artists and his “native language,” it seems, is a standard jazz style. Not surprisingly, the album’s most exciting tracks are its two jazziest (both featuring big band-style arrangements by de Haas and Ted Firth), “Cool Yule” (Steve Allen) and a medley of “We Need a Little Christmas” (Jerry Herman), “Deck the Halls” (Thomas Oliphant), and “Children Go Where I Send Thee” (traditional). The medley (orchestrated by David Chase) is wonderfully speedy, and its supersonic tempo throughout works brilliantly to connect the three dissimilar components—a show tune, a carol, and an African-American spiritual. De Haas attacks them all with the crisp diction of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, which not only adds to the medley’s delightful stylistic diversity, but lends a rushed quality that recalls the eager, enthusiasm felt by children counting the days until Christmas. The super-swinging “Cool Yule (orchestrated by Charlie Rosen) is irresistibly syncopated and sends de Haas into impressive, humor-filled scatting. But best are the comic sounds emanating from the brass and wind instruments, that let us find amusement in articulations of the “cool.”
My favorite track, however, is the closer, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane) because de Haas sings it in a way that sounds like it’s really him, so natural. There’s a quiet simplicity to his sexy, caressing vocals that’s smartly complemented by Armand Hirsch’s highly active solo guitar accompaniment, the instrument animating the welcoming spaces formed by de Haas’s wide-open phrasing.
I also relish de Haas’s attractive rendition of the album’s title song, “Let Me Carry You This Christmas” (Curtis Moore and Tom Mizer). Accompanied only by Matthew Whitaker’s pretty keyboard accompaniment, de Haas sings in whispery tones that grow just moderately louder over time and capture the song’s comforting message of trusted guidance.
But what makes this album so interesting are de Haas’s unusual, sometimes dismaying interpretations of songs you expected to hear differently. For example, “Who Would Imagine a King” (Mervyn Warren and Hallerin Hilton Hill), arranged by Firth and de Haas, and orchestrated by David Mansfield for piano and strings, is essentially a lullaby. Yet, it’s sung, not soothingly, but with a thoughtful, concerned awe, suggesting a spirit, very much alive and awake while, simultaneously, at peace. And then there’s Michael O. Mitchell and de Haas’s gritty, guitar-driven, hard rock arrangement of the Annie Lennox ballad “Cold,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas. At first, you’ll wonder why it’s even on this album. But it soon becomes clear that, beyond adding to the genre diversity, while the song asks “love” to “take hold of us” it’s speaking of a love that’s “cold,” and profoundly challenges our notion of love as necessarily a warm, cozy sentiment.
One may also be surprised by how classically Wayne Barker and Whitaker arrange a pairing of “The First Noel” (traditional) and “In the Bleak Midwinter” (Gustav Holst/Christina Rossetti). De Haas sings both the carol and the hymn, with sustained resonance that, coupled with Whitaker’s lush piano playing, evoke gloriously “long-hair” sensibilities.
Completing the album are an extremely slow performance of the jazz ballad “Snowbound” (Russell Faith/Clarence Kehner) and a soulful, yet probably-not-for-all-tastes version of “Silent Night” (Franz Xaver Gruber/Joseph Mohr), sung with stirring gospel-style rawness, alongside spare bass accompaniment by George Farmer (who co-arranged with de Haas).
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Produced by Stewart Lerman, James Frazee, Sean Patrick Flahaven, and Darius de Haas for Concord Theatricals Recordings, released digitally October 24, 2025, and on vinyl, December 5, 2025.
Lisa Jo Sagolla is the author of "The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken" and "Rock ‘n’ Roll Dances of the 1950s." A choreographer, critic, and historian, she has written for Back Stage, American Theatre, Film Journal International, and numerous other popular publications, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals. An adjunct professor at Columbia University and Rutgers, she is currently researching a book on the influence of Pennsylvania’s Bucks County on America’s musical theatre.
