POP MUSIC REVIEW : Transferring Holiday Harmony : The four-part, in-tune vocalizing by Manhattan Transfer brought warmth to even the most traditional of Christmas songs.

By BILL KOHLHAASE

Dec. 22, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

COSTA MESA — There’s one bad thing about the holiday season: too much holiday music.

Oh, sure, everyone loves the carols and there’s a few pop Christmas tunes that rank with the best of pop standards. But as December grinds ahead, we find ourselves dreading the thought of listening to one more version of “Silent Night,” despite its beautiful simplicity.

Or at least that was true until Saturday when the Manhattan Transfer, on the second night of a two-night appearance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, aired its version. No, they didn’t apply any upbeat swing or a jazz walk to the carol. It was straight, with all the reverence a church choir applies to the nearly 200-year-old tune. What set it apart was the four-part harmony from the four, in-tune voices.

That simple blend of sounds, with all the warmth of a burning Yule log, gave the song a depth often missing in even the most ambitious of arrangements.

Doing Christmas music seems a natural for the much-honored vocal quartet, and the release this year of the Transfer’s “The Christmas Album” proves it. Saturday, the group lifted vocal arrangements, many of them from respected writer Johnny Mandel, from the disc while sprinkling the performance with a few of their better-known numbers, such as Freddie Green’s “Corner Pocket.”

If the heavy reliance on holiday material suggests the concert was a tedious affair, it was not. Enough stylistic variety and unexpected twists among the familiar and not-so-familiar numbers took care of that. Add rich instrumental support from the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and you had a performance that was as much fun as tearing the wrapping from a very large present.

Like “Silent Night,” the group’s opener, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” was done straight in a reserved tempo, with little in the way of stylistic gimmickry. Other tunes, notably “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” were something quite different than the original. Alan Paul’s vocalese admonitions for good behavior set to a Paul Desmond solo brought new life to the Tin Pan Alley holiday classic.

Also adding interest were non-seasonal tunes that nonetheless were apt for holiday airings. The theme Claude Thornhill wrote for his band, “Snowfall,” was such a number, and the Transfer gave it a cool, jazz-influenced reading. The group’s final encore, John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “Goodnight” (from the white album) gave the show the air of a family affair, specially with the addition of Transfer offspring Basie Hauser, age 3, Arielle Paul, 7, and Keely Pickering, 11, adding lines at the end.

Under the direction of the Transfer’s musical director and keyboardist Yoron Gershovsky, the orchestra added needed sweetness when called for (mostly from the strings) and a bit of pizazz in the appropriate places. Sal Lozano took a pair of stirring tenor saxophone solos while trumpeter Wayne Bergeron took a glistening improvisation during “Happy Holiday.”

The orchestra’s opening set, which included choral backing from the Orange County Conductors Guild Choir, displayed the other side of the Christmas coin during Robert Russell Bennett-Robert Shaw’s medley “The Many Moods of Christmas, Suite 3.” The suite, basically a medley of the overly familiar, brought little new to the included pieces (“What Child Is This?” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”). Despite the title’s reference to “Many Moods,” the piece seemed to be all of the same feeling until its specially big close.

But that was the only predictable piece in the Symphony’s half of the performance. Under the direction of conductor Richard Kaufman, the orchestra played from Dmitri Tiomkin’s score from “It’s a Wonderful Life” and brought life to the rather mundane material and its wholesale lifting of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Best was music from John Williams’ score to “Home Alone.” Though there was a bit of rough sledding in keeping the orchestra, choir and the added 16-voice children’s chorus all together, their effort and the sheer volume of sound was impressive indeed.