Kathy Mattea’s Songs and the Season

Thursday, December 4, 2014, 7:30 P.M.

OCCC Visual and Performing Arts Center Theater

For the first time since 2010, Grammy award winning artist Kathy Mattea will be touring her Songs and the Season Christmas program, a thoughtful blend of old favorites and new songs from her celebrated holiday albums, Joy For Christmas Day and Good News. The singer's unmistakable voice explores music's most basic human essence through timeless melodies and uplifting narratives while intimately connecting with her audience. Her Christmas concerts are, she says, "more about the spiritual side of Christmas, and not so much about the holiday" - and the result is a performance that will bring both joy and reverence to the seasonal celebration.

From "Christmas Collage," an innovative, insightful medley of traditional carols, to the supple gospel call-and-response of "Baby King," to the dramatic "Mary Did You Know?'; Mattea's Songs and the Season program displays her natural flexibility and hard-won artistic integrity. As NPR says,"Kathy Mattea has never stuck to conventions within any genre." Whether she's adapting the classic "Angels We Have Heard On High" or arranging "There's Still My Joy," a new contribution from award-winning writers Melissa Manchester and Beth Nielsen-Chapman, Mattea brings a fresh ear and a natural, unforced eclecticism to this holiday musical experience.

Twice named Female Vocalist of the Year by the Country Music Association, Kathy Mattea carved out a role for herself in the late 1980s and 1990s as a sensitive yet energetic artist at ease both with country tradition and free-ranging innovation. With close to thirty Top 40 country hits, including 15 Top Ten and 4 Number One entries, five gold albums, and a platinum-selling greatest hits compilation, she is among the most successful women in the genre's history, yet her creative spirit has led her to explore musical territory extending well beyond its confines.

www.mattea.com