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A Very Sinoff Christmas
Danny Sinoff
Label: Cellar Music Group
Released: 2026
Duration: 00:41:50
Views: 77
Tracks
Silver Bells; Winter Wonderland; I’ll Be Home for Christmas; Whatever Happened to Christmas; Santa Claus Is Coming to Town; The Christmas Waltz; The Christmas Song; I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm; Merry Christmas Baby; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
Personnel
Additional Personnel / Information
Ulysses Owens Jr. — drums (“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”); Tyler Henderson — piano (“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”); Jerry Weldon — tenor saxophone (“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”); Joe Magnarelli — trumpet (“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”); Dan Wilson — guitar (“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”); Cory Weeds — tenor saxophone (“The Christmas Song”); Leandro Pellegrino — guitar (“I’ll Be Home for Christmas”); Jeremy Pelt — trumpet (“Whatever Happened to Christmas”); CY Leo — harmonica (“The Christmas Waltz”); Sara Caswell — violin; Tomoko Akaboshi — violin; Fung Chern Hwei — viola; Zachary Brown — cello
Album Description
A Very Sinoff Christmas, the second album and first holiday release from Southwest Florida-based vocalist, pianist and bandleader Danny Sinoff, arrives November 13 ia Cellar Music. Produced by Ulysses Owens Jr., the album follows Sinoff’s April 2026 debut, Make Someone Happy, and incorporates two holiday singles released in 2025: “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” and “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”
A baritone steeped in the Great American Songbook and the singer-pianist tradition, Sinoff draws inspiration from Christmas albums by Harry Connick Jr., Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and Mel Tormé. Throughout A Very Sinoff Christmas, his piano and voice intertwine with radiant strings arranged by Matt Fukui Grandy, capturing both the warmth of the season and the melancholy that can accompany it.
“The holidays can be emotionally fraught and challenging for many of us,” Sinoff says. “Even as we celebrate with family and friends, we also feel the absence of those we have lost, or friends that have moved away. It’s important to acknowledge both emotional sides of the holiday season, and there’s no better way to revisit these emotions than through music.”
On the main sessions, Sinoff is joined by bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Aaron Kimmel, with special guests guitarist Dan Wilson, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds, guitarist Leandro Pellegrino and harmonica virtuoso CY Leo. The two previously released holiday singles feature pianist Tyler Henderson, tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, Wolfe, Owens and trumpeter Joe Magnarelli. The string section comprises violinists Sara Caswell and Tomoko Akaboshi, violist Fung Chern Hwei and cellist Zachary Brown.
After a quarter-century of singing and playing for packed rooms throughout Southwest Florida — and, more recently, performing frequently in New York City — Sinoff has made a swift transition from the stage to the studio. “I was shaped on the bandstand,” he says. “I learned more onstage than anywhere else. You learn as you go, through years and years of gigs. It never ends. It’s a constant evolution.”
Owens first heard Sinoff on a Florida gig after Sinoff’s longtime bassist Scott Smith connected the two. “Whoa, this guy is really special,” Owens remembers thinking upon hearing him sing. “That voice is golden.” Owens went on to produce and drum on Make Someone Happy, then had a hunch that Sinoff’s voice might be particularly suited to holiday music.
“Danny, your voice has a real holiday vibe,” Owens told him of his warm, elegant vocal style. Then came the suggestion: “Why don’t we make a holiday record?”
For Sinoff, the idea immediately reached beyond repertoire. “Christmas is a feeling to me,” he says. “A feeling in the air. The warmth of Christmas, the feeling of home — I wanted to convey that through this music.”
Released earlier in 2026 via Cellar Music, Make Someone Happy captured Sinoff’s decades of performing experience on a proper label release for the first time. Working again with Grandy on A Very Sinoff Christmas, Sinoff and Owens brought in the string section led by Akaboshi, with Grandy developing arrangements from Sinoff’s melodic, harmonic and structural ideas.
“I really enjoyed what Matt wrote,” Sinoff says. “The melodies and how they complemented my voice and piano was magnificent. He worked hard for me on this, and I’m very grateful.”
Born in Boston and raised first in Newton, Massachusetts, before moving to Naples, Florida, during childhood, Sinoff began classical piano lessons at four and was performing professionally by thirteen. A year later, his father introduced him to Harry Connick Jr. and Bobby Darin” “We listened to all that stuff together,” Sinoff has said. “That’s when I knew what I wanted to do.”
Those records led him toward the Great American Songbook, jazz singing and the singer-pianist tradition. Over the next twenty-five years, Sinoff developed his craft in clubs, restaurants, concert settings and private engagements throughout Southwest Florida and beyond. At Ellington’s Jazz Club on Sanibel Island, he worked with the late trumpeter Dan Miller, whose credits included Harry Connick Jr., Maynard Ferguson, Tom Jones, Woody Herman and Wynton Marsalis. He later held down a fifteen-year, two-night-a-week run at the Roadhouse Café in Fort Myers, often alongside longtime Saturday Night Live saxophonist Lew Del Gatto.
Except on the two earlier singles and the spare duo version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Sinoff sings from the piano throughout A Very Sinoff Christmas.
“Silver Bells,” inspired in part by Tony Bennett’s version with the Count Basie Orchestra, opens the album with a straight-ahead trio treatment. “I wanted that same vibe — that straight-ahead, real in-the-pocket swinging energy,” Sinoff says. “Winter Wonderland” follows with Wolfe, Kimmel and strings. “It’s light, it’s clean, it swings,” Sinoff says. “The strings float on top of it.”
“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is recast as a bossa nova with Pellegrino on guitar, an approach Sinoff first explored on a Florida duo gig with bassist Paul Gormley. “Whatever Happened to Christmas,” written by Jimmy Webb and introduced to Sinoff by Owens, is one of the album’s most emotional performances, pairing his voice with strings.
“When I first heard the strings come in on ‘Whatever Happened to Christmas,’ I literally had tears down my face,” Sinoff says. “I could not believe this was my record. The strings were there, my voice was there. It feels like my voice is made for this sound. This is what I’ve been looking for.”
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” builds from bass and voice to the full trio. “It’s a fun, happy tune,” Sinoff says. “As soon as you hear it, you’re instantly in holiday mode.” “The Christmas Waltz” features CY Leo on harmonica, with an interlude inspired by Vince Guaraldi’s treatment of “Greensleeves” and the sound of Toots Thielemans. “I thought it would be perfect for him to blow a solo over a waltz with the harmonica,” Sinoff says.
“The Christmas Song” features Cory Weeds on tenor saxophone, with an introduction and ending developed from Sinoff’s ideas and arranged by Grandy. “The intro and the outro — that is all my idea,” Sinoff says. “He transformed those ideas into magnificent melodies.” “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” one of the two previously released holiday singles, features Henderson, Weldon, Wolfe, Owens, Magnarelli and Wilson.
For “Merry Christmas Baby,” Kimmel suggested the Charles Brown classic during the session after Owens called for something bluesy. The band worked through the form and recorded it on the spot. “I had never sung that tune before that day ever,” Sinoff says. “We just laid down a few takes of it, and it came out great.”
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” strips the sound down to a duo, with Wilson accompanying Sinoff on guitar. Sinoff uses the song’s more melancholy lyric — “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” — and gives himself more room as a vocalist. “When I’m just singing, it allows me to take a little more time with the lyric,” he says. “It brings me into a different space as a singer.”
“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?,” the album’s other previously released holiday single, closes the set. Sinoff first heard the Frank Loesser standard through Connick and later worked on it with Suzi Reynolds, Freddie Cole’s longtime manager. Jerry Weldon, Connick’s longtime tenor saxophonist, arranged the track and plays the solo.
Across his career, Sinoff has performed and recorded with David “Fathead” Newman, Chris Brubeck, Dan Brubeck, Jimmy McGriff, Russell Malone, Paul Bollenback, Joe Farnsworth, Herlin Riley, Owens, Benny Benack III, Weldon, Wolfe and Magnarelli. His engagements have included Smoke and Minton’s, Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia; Vic’s Supper Club and the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas; and festivals including South Beach, Syracuse, Adirondack and the Suncoast Jazz Classic in Clearwater, Florida.
With A Very Sinoff Christmas, Sinoff hopes to make his own contribution to the singer-led Christmas-album tradition that first drew him to the music. “Through their music, they’ve all made their indelible mark on the feeling of the holidays,” he says. “This is my humble contribution to that canon.”
“It all becomes very Sinoff,” he says proudly. “This album really feels like me.”
Album uploaded by Morgan Enos
