When two vocalists with genuine jazz credentials agree to spend December performing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the question is not whether they can do it—it is what they bring to songs this familiar that makes them worth hearing again. Caity Gyorgy, a three-time JUNO Award winner whose bebop and swing vocabulary earns critical notes of “warm voice and swinging phrasing,” teams with Christian Wiggs, the PBS Jazz Tonight host whom Jazz Weekly compared to Kurt Elling “but with more of a James Moody flexibility,” for a holiday swing evening in Buffalo on December 11.
About the Show
Swing into the Holidays is a nationally touring production, represented by IMG Artists, that visits SFJAZZ and the Tempe Center for the Arts before arriving at Buffalo State Performing Arts Center, with a final date in Toronto the following day. The program pulls from holiday film soundtracks, traditional carols, and sing-along standards, presenting familiar music through jazz phrasing and swing rhythm, and is family-friendly throughout.
Gyorgy, based in Toronto and Montreal, has built one of the more compelling résumés in contemporary vocal jazz. She has performed at the Tucson Jazz Festival, Tokyo’s Cotton Club, and with the UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra in Finland; her Grand Prize in the jazz category of the 2021 John Lennon Songwriting Contest, for the original composition “Secret Safe,” reflects the seriousness of her songwriting alongside her performing career. Critics describe her originals as sounding like “1950s compositions with contemporary lyrics.” Her most recent release, Caity Gyorgy with Strings (2025), continues her work with Brooklyn-based La Reserve Records.
Wiggs brings a different professional register. He has performed at Birdland, Blue Note New York, and Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center, produced major productions at the Sydney Opera House and Royal Albert Hall, and created the In Memoriam segment for the 78th Annual BAFTA Awards. His most recent album, Oscar Meets Tony, Act I, reflects his ease moving between jazz and the Broadway tradition—appropriate company, given that his co-headliner composes in the Great American Songbook idiom.
Venue & Logistics
Buffalo State Performing Arts Center (Rockwell Hall 210, 1300 Elmwood Avenue) is the main performance venue on the Buffalo State campus in western New York. The Friday, December 11 performance begins at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets are on sale via etix.com. Buy tickets