Colors of Christmas, With a Dash of Pop and R

One tradition that’s become as much a part of holidays in the Southland as the Hollywood Christmas parade is the annual Colors of Christmas concert at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Singer and host Peabo Bryson typically rounds up three other pop-R&B; vocalists to deck the center’s halls with a smattering of their hits and a slew of holiday tunes.

It’s all so comfortably easy to digest that Colors of Christmas has sold out multiple-night engagements for the last six years. It was a bit surprising, then, to spot several empty seats in the upper decks at Thursday’s opening-night performance of this year’s run, due perhaps to the fact that the engagement has been extended from three days in recent years to four this year.

But the hall was the only thing that was less than full.

The stage itself was packed: Bryson is joined this year by Roberta Flack, back for her sixth tour, plus Colors newcomers Marilyn McCoo of the Fifth Dimension and Righteous Brother Bill Medley, as well as a 24-piece orchestra. That left no room for the Maranatha Community Church Mass Choir of Los Angeles, which added its energetic contributions from a novel location above and behind the festively decorated stage.

Medley brought some soulful grit to the smooth pop-R&B; balladry that dominated the 2 1/2-hour performance, his commanding baritone seeming to grow expressively gruffer with time.

His best moment came in the Christian-pop ballad “Mary Did You Know,” which he and the band gently funked up to beneficial effect.

As the evening’s likable host, Bryson brought his partners on and off in various combinations smoothly. His own melismatic vocals evoked Johnny Mathis early on when he sang “My Favorite Things,” but he came into his own in a duet with McCoo on the theme song from “Beauty and the Beast.” Were there still such an animal as the TV musical variety show, Bryson would be an ideal host.

*

He and McCoo also provided a politely romantic duet in Frank Loesser’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” a throwback to an age when duets were actually dialogues and not just vehicles for star collaborations.

With such extensive musical forces on hand, Bryson & Co. occasionally succumbed to the temptation of “if a little’s good, a lot must be better.” They pumped arrangements full with lush strings, horns and thundering percussion, not always to the advantage of each song.

The pulsing rhythmic push added to Flack’s rendition of her 1972 hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” robbed it of the achingly intense intimacy of a solo piano accompaniment.

McCoo delivered a nicely restrained performance of the ultra-theatrical ballad “One Less Bell to Answer,” tapping her post pop-star career as a stage actress and singer. Later, however, she crossed over from tasteful expression to showy vocal gymnastics with an over-the-top treatment of “O Holy Night.”

That was an exception during a show in which the holiday tunes rather than the various artists’ biggest hits generally had the strongest impact.

Credit that to the singers’ canny selections of several less-familiar seasonal songs that therefore were fresher than either the ultra-familiar carols or their 25- to 35-year-old hits.

* The Colors of Christmas, today at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. $50 to $70. (800) 300-4345.