Becoming an Old Hand at the ‘Young Messiah’ : Pop music: Gospel star Sandi Patti is back for the fourth time when the tour comes to Anaheim tonight. Her latest album reflects the changes in her personal life.

Each year at Christmastime, the “Young Messiah” tour acts as a sort of gospel cavalcade of stars. The lineup changes every year, but this fourth outing finds Sandi Patti back for the fourth time as the tour’s trump card.

Patti--the second-most popular gospel artist of the past decade, after crossover star Amy Grant--also acts as co-host of this year’s tour, which comes to the Anaheim Arena tonight.

She’s well aware that the show’s format--contemporary Christian music meets 18th-Century Christian music--rankles classical purists, but she says the pop tinkering does the cause of Handel more good than harm.

“There are certainly some who feel that you should never tamper with a great piece of work--and I tend to believe that, too,” asserts the five-time Grammy winner, speaking from her home in Anderson, Ind. “I don’t think you should change something just for the sake of changing it--but to maybe breathe some new life into it, and still acknowledge that this was inspired by a wonderful piece of work.

“I think that one of the things ‘The Young Messiah’ is doing is exposing that great piece of music to a group of people that would not go to a symphony concert or walk into a choral festival and hear this, and they’re coming away going, ‘Oh, wow, the next time a symphony performs that, I want to go and hear the original.’ ”

The first half of the show features Patti and cohorts including BeBe and CeCe Winans, Carman, Steven Curtis Chapman and Steve Green performing Christmas favorites with an orchestra, joined by a choir for a second-half performance of the “Messiah” updating. (There’s also an album out this year, “The New Young Messiah”--not to be confused with the old “Young Messiah” album that came out three years ago.)

Patti’s latest album is “Le Voyage,” on Word/Epic. Known for an easy-listening style in which inspirational songs typically build to a huge finish spotlighting her operatic high notes, Patti took a different tack with this loosely conceptual work, which found her vocals more subdued and the themes slightly darker.

“There are some songs that had a lot of tension in the lyrics; there was not a lot of resolve, and we wanted the music to reflect that,” says Patti, 37.

That tension coincided with changes in Patti’s personal life--chiefly a divorce from her husband and former manager that caused concern among the singer’s more fundamentalist fans--and even landed her in the supermarket tabloids. “Le Voyage” was being written by her longtime producer Greg Nelson before the trouble came down, but she says she’s not sure she would have been ready to record it had her situation not mandated a less triumphal tone.

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“I’ve always tried to have my music reflect where I was at personally,” Patti says. “It’s been a tough couple of years. I think there are days that have happy endings, and there are days that don’t have happy endings.

“And through the course of life and all the struggles that come with it, there’s a God who stands faithfully with us--and that I know to be true in my life, even amid the days of happy or not-so-happy endings.

“It just seemed the right time to do a project like that, because that’s where I was at personally. I don’t think it would’ve felt right (to do another album like the previous ones). I think now that would feel right, because time certainly heals a lot.”

* Sandi Patti, Steven Curtis Chapman, BeBe and CeCe Winans, 4 HIM, Larnelle Harris, Michael English, Twila Paris, Wayne Watson, Steve Green and First Call perform tonight at 8 at the Anaheim Arena, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. $15.50 to $17.50. (714) 704-2500.