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Listening to previously undiscovered Christmas songs by Christopher Cross, the 1980s pop singer known for hits such as “Arthur’s Theme”, “Sailing” and “Ride Like the Wind”, is a surprisingly delightful experience. I have always liked his gentle voice, and I love Christmas tunes, but I did not expect to find this 2009 Christmas album so hypnotic that I’d find myself keeping it on heavy rotation. I do and here’s why: the 12 songs are performed, produced and arranged with such deftness that they create a sense of merriment, serenity and joy. For example, Cross, never sounding better, picks up the pace on “The Little Drummer Boy,” which makes all the difference in re-imagining an otherwise somber tune as a story of something to truly behold. He does the same with “Do You Hear What I Hear” and other classics including “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Besides beloved songs, with Cross and other musicians on guitar, with piano accompaniment, he adds two Christmas tunes he co-wrote, “Does it Feel Like Christmas” and “A Dream of Peace at Christmastime”, which features a chorus of children that actually sound like children. The new tunes are blissful. All of A Christopher Cross Christmas evokes an enchanted holiday. I can’t recommend this wonderful album, currently on sale at Amazon for eight dollars, highly enough.

Los Angeles residents can enjoy classic Christmas songs on a couple of Saturday afternoons next month. At 2 pm on December 8th and 15th, at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Master Chorale performs such tunes as “Deck the Halls”, “Silent Night”, “The First Noël”, “White Christmas”, “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” and “Here We Come a Caroling” in two generically titled Christmas-themed matinees, Holiday Wonders: Festival of Carols. The programs include new arrangements of Christmas carols and traditional favorites, sung by 90 members of the Master Chorale, conducted by music director Grant Gershon. Performances will feature Disney Hall’s pipe organ, played by John West. Holiday Wonders: Festival of Carols is partly sponsored by a grant from the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts and The Bank of America Charitable Foundation. Tickets range from $24 to $99 (see Web site for rates and rules regarding children). The Walt Disney Concert Hall is located in downtown Los Angeles.

Putting her unique interpretation on every classic stage musical tune in this 11-song cover set, Susan Boyle delivers another quality album with her fourth CD, Standing Ovation: The Greatest Songs from the Stage. Of course, with a single Rodgers and Hammerstein tune, whether these are the greatest stage songs is a dubious claim, but Ms. Boyle, who broke out on YouTube in 2009 and followed up with an excellent first recording, offers a distinguished approach to each version.

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (The Wizard of Oz) is beautifully rendered in classic downbeat tone. “The Winner Takes It All” (Mamma Mia!) is also respectful, as is “Memory” (Cats), which manages to achieve the looping effect consistent with the stage musical unlike other cover versions, and “Out Here on My Own” (Fame) and “As Long as He Needs Me” (Oliver!) are the most in-character versions on the recording. They’re all fine and interesting if you like Susan Boyle’s voice, and I do, and they are not the most obvious selections. The formerly bullied singer adds liner notes to why she picked each tune.

Renditions often end abruptly, the opposite of showier cover versions. She changes context for “Bring Him Home”, a brilliant and emotional song written about a young man sent to war and meant to be sung by the character Jean Valjean from the 1980s stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Her pairings with Donny Osmond for a bouyant song from Jekyll & Hyde, “This is Our Moment”, and “All I Ask of You” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, work well. The Phantom himself, iconic Michael Crawford who made the title stage role his own, still brings magic to the dark, music box ghost tune in a separately recorded duet. Another haunting ballad, Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” (A Little Night Music), is plainly delivered. Her simple, capable voice has matured and it helps that both partners and material are thoughtfully chosen, produced and arranged to suit Susan Boyle’s strengths. I am not a musical or a vocal expert and I do not think she has one of the greatest voices of all time, though she certainly more than carries a tune. Yet I think her sustained popularity since emerging from obscurity continues to stem from her evident respect for music, which she sings and, where appropriate, belts out like it means something. Her talent is what it is. The songs are what they are. The combination is worth both a listen and a round of applause.

John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John reunite on This Christmas, a cheerful holiday charity album that benefits their respective causes. The pair, who famously co-starred in Grease (1978) and less famously in Two of a Kind (1983), sing all lead vocals in duets and trios. They clearly have a fabulous time.

They deserve it. Olivia’s been divorced, survived cancer and parented a troubled child, and John Travolta, who has suffered his own troubles, including the long-ago loss of his fiancee, Diana Hyland, recently lost a child. Here, they recapture their movie star magic with 13 polished Christmas tunes that, at their best, celebrate joy, love and good will. Though their voices are often overwhelmed by the slick production, they’re generally in fine form – Olivia’s voice and style change and improve with age – and Travolta, not a professional singer like his mate, makes out with a few standout moments. He taps his “Greased Lightning” voice and imitates Elvis on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” featuring Kenny G on tenor saxophone.

Olivia shines everywhere, especially on “Silent Night”, her understated version with Travolta of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” and a playful version of “The Christmas Song” in which she and Travolta exchange a greedy, gift grabbing rapport at the end. The 64-year-old British native, who came to America from Australia where she was raised, also does a fitting mashup in the final track, “Auld Lang Syne/Christmastime is Here”, with Travolta urging us toward Vince Guaraldi’s peaceful Charlie Brown Christmas theme while Olivia bids the past adieu. Their best song is a trio with folk singer James Taylor, “Deck the Halls”, which feels like three friends caroling on Christmas Eve. Other trio tunes, such “Winter Wonderland” with Tony Bennett and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” with Barbra Streisand, are too obviously recorded separately. On “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, a cougarish Olivia takes the traditionally male role to 58-year-old Travolta’s hard-to-get guy and it’s instantly charming. Cliff Richard, who paired with Olivia in 1980 for “Suddenly” from Xanadu, joins the two stars on “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, which opens with an introduction by Travolta that seems touching given how difficult the holidays must be for his family. The only new tune, the buoyant “I Think You Might Like It”, puts them in an enjoyable follow-up to their smash hit Grease single, “You’re the One That I Want” and is also written by that song’s writer, longtime ONJ collaborator and songwriter John Farrar.

Olivia, who is doing quirky film roles – a butch barfly in Sordid Lives, a hippie mother in Score: A Hockey Musical, and a politician’s cocaine-sniffing wife in A Few Best Men – and continues to tour, remains delightful in everything she does and her vocal interpretations of these classic lyrics are a treat. Travolta, too, whose career spans decades from playing a dumb hunk in ABC’s Welcome Back, Kotter to doing drag as an overweight mother in the musical Hairspray, has a decent voice on This Christmas. As a duo, these 70s/80s superstars offer, like those 50s-/60s superstars Rock Hudson and Doris Day before them, good, cheesy all-American fun with a sexy wink and nod, in time for the holidays when we could use a burst of good cheer. At any age, whatever their private lives, they still go together.