A Christmas Eve of Music on KCET

Christmas Eve is a night for music, as choral and symphonic numbers issue from television sets while families go about baking, wrapping presents and dressing for church. Here in the Southland, many of those sets are tuned to KCET.

One reason is that L.A.’s PBS station presents the live broadcast of one of the city’s most beloved events: the annual “Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration.” Airing from 3 to 9 p.m., this year’s event features nearly three dozen local music and dance groups.

Presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the event dispenses plenty of warm fuzzies, as carols float through children’s gap-toothed smiles. But it’s also a vital compendium of local arts-making, providing many viewers their first encounters with such groups as the Valley Beth Shalom choir and the Jazz Tap Ensemble.

These groups share today’s program with swaying hula dancers, festive folklorico performers, whirling dervishes, a Cambodian new year ceremony, a flute orchestra and choirs of all ages and all kinds. For the full lineup and anticipated performing times, check the Web site lacountyarts.org or call (213) 972-3099.

No Christmas Eve would be complete without a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and KCET has that, too, at 9 p.m., in a prerecorded program with the Utah Symphony. Keith Lockhart, the symphony’s personable and energetic music director, narrates and conducts most of the program, which begins with a joyous Beethoven “Hallelujah” and climaxes with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ monumental Christmas oratorio “Hodie.” English subtitles prove especially helpful when songs are in Russian or Latin.

At 10:30 p.m.: a rebroadcast of a concert at St. Olaf College, famed for its choirs.