Niia, Christmas with Niia Review

Niia — Christmas with Niia: A Soulful Voice for the Season

by Sylvannia Garutch

Holiday standards offer singers an interesting opportunity to be heard by a wide audience. The melodies are familiar, and on Christmas with Niia, vocalist Niia Bertino approaches that familiarity through a musical language shaped by jazz, R&B, and contemporary gospel. Working with producer Spencer Zahn, she finds room for expressive phrasing and distinctive vocal color within arrangements that move comfortably between atmospheric intimacy and rhythmic energy. The result is a collection in which her voice provides the connecting thread between several musical traditions.

“Wonderful Christmastime” opens with a soulful backbeat, its relaxed rhythmic pocket supporting keyboard figures and lightly colored synthesizer textures. Bertino enters with a sweet, sensuous timbre, allowing subtle vibrato to emerge at the ends of selected phrases. As the form passes, string-like synthesizer lines and keyboard countermelodies move around the familiar tune, adding motion without crowding the vocal. The final passage expands through layered vocal counterpoint and expressive R&B-inflected fills. The production gradually brings those vocal details forward, creating a satisfying build that feels organic to the performance. Rather than abandoning the song’s pop character, the arrangement gives its familiar melody a richer soulful setting.

“Christmas Time Is Here” lets expression emerge with keyboard arpeggios establishing a dreamlike atmosphere, with strings adding warmth and depth to the harmonic setting. A melodic quotation of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” passes through the introduction before Bertino enters. Her first phrase is particularly revealing. She slides breathily into the opening syllable of “Christmas,” then carries the melody downward through a connected, legato movement toward “time.” As the phrase settles on “here,” a trailing embellishment adds a blues-inflected finish. These small characters give the familiar melody a personal and emotional connection to the vocalist. The performance draws on classic jazz-ballad expression while contemporary harmonic colors and understated R&B shading keep the atmosphere distinctly her own.

“This Christmas” shifts with a back-beat groove. A buoyant soul jazz feel and bright, major-pentatonic melodic character establish an optimistic rhythmic setting, with touches of contemporary gospel and 1970s jazz fusion informing the instrumental colors. Keyboard voicings, horn figures, and rhythm-section accents interact with Bertino’s increasingly animated R&B vocal embellishments. The ensemble’s coordinated hits provide momentum without disturbing the pocket, while a keyboard solo maintains that rhythmic continuity through the bridge and into the final chorus. The closing vamp brings the gospel influence into sharper focus, its repeated figures and collective energy reinforcing the song’s celebratory character. Even as the arrangement embraces soul and gospel, its harmonic movement and ensemble interaction retain a recognizable jazz sensibility.

After listening to all these performances, Bertino’s subtle vibrato, blues-colored inflections, and rhythmic flexibility give each song a recognizable vocal personality. Zahn’s production provides moods for those details by allowing the instrumental settings to develop. Christmas with Niia brings several musical traditions into conversation without forcing them into a single stylistic formula. The melodies remain recognizable, but the pleasure comes from hearing how Niia shapes their phrasing, colors, and grooves into something personal.