Interview: Jessica Vosk Takes SLEIGH on the Road

For Jessica Vosk, there will be no rest this holiday season. The popular performer – who just wrapped up a year-long run as Jersey in “Hell’s Kitchen” and will return in a musical adaptation of the Iris Rainer Dart novel “Beaches,” which begins previews at the Majestic Theatre on March 27, 2026, ahead of an official opening on April 22 – is instead making full use of her brief Broadway break for a holiday concert tour that will bring her to the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, California, on December 19 and New York’s 92nd Street Y on December 21.

The tour marks the first anniversary of her 2024 album “Sleigh,” which features Vosk solos and collaborations with Ariana DeBose, David Foster, and Neil Patrick Harris on traditional and contemporary Christmas songs including “This Christmas,” “Santa Tell Me,” “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” “Grown-Up Christmas List,” “My Favorite Things/Carol of the Bells,” “Last Christmas” and “Mary, Did You Know?”

With several Broadway shows to her credit, Vosk’s holiday concerts also include selections from “Wicked,” in which the New Jersey native and one-time Wall Street financial analyst won widespread acclaim as one of the best Elphaba replacements in the show’s history, plus “Chess” and “Waitress,” in which she performed at The Muny in St. Louis.

Vosk was at her home in New York recently when she took time out for a Zoom call to discuss her holiday tour, her album, and more.

Tell me about “Sleigh”.

It’s the album’s first birthday. It came out when I was starting in “Hell’s Kitchen” last year, and I had to kind of put it on the back burner – to work with Alicia Keys. It’s not a terrible problem to have! But it made us think, we need to make this into a tour. We worked hard on this album, and doing this tour this month is kind of a re-release. I’m so glad we made that decision, because I finished “Hell’s Kitchen” and a few days later it was off to the races we go with “Sleigh.”

The goal of the album was to make it lush and we did just that. It’s also been phenomenally well done by music producer Scott M. Riesett, who won a Grammy award for “Some Like It Hot” and was also nominated for “Death Becomes Her.” I met Scott through Mary-Mitchell Campbell and Mark Shaiman, and he is one of the best. Doing an album like has long been one of my wildest dreams.

What’s your favorite song from the album?

I really love the medley we did called “Do You Hear the Faithful?” It blends “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” That was a blast. “Winter Song” is also one of my favorites. It’s probably those two right now, but it’s ever-changing.

Which one do you like best? I want to know.

I would have to go with “Mary, Did You Know?”

Oh, I love that you love that one! We did that as a very special arrangement. My guitarist on this album is Dillon Kondor, a grandson of Carole King. I asked him to write a mandolin arrangement, kind of out of thin air, which I thought he did expertly. You don’t hear that song on every Christmas album, which is one of the reasons I called Alison Krause, who’s a dear friend, and asked her to throw some harmonies in for me.  She was right in the middle of recording her new album with Union Station and couldn’t make it into the studio with us, but she helped arrange it. What she added was what I had been hearing in my head – kind of a bluegrass nod to a fantastic secular piece. Half the fun of going into a studio and producing an album is calling friends like Alison and saying, “What do you think of this, and can you give me your notes on how this could be better?”

You worked with some other high-profile friends on this album, too, from David Foster and Neil Patrick Harris to Ariana DeBose. What was that like?

David was my first call. He and I started working together a couple of years ago. And every now and then, I’ll join a concert of his. I love working with him. When it came to “Sleigh,” I remember I sent him a text message when I was at the gym and said, “Listen, I’m putting this album together and I want to do ‘Grown-Up Christmas List’ – it’s one of my favorite Christmas songs – and I want you to play it. What do you think, will you do it?” And he immediately said yes. So, we went back and forth on a bunch of different versions that he sent, and the one we chose just sounds so beautiful.

Neil is a very dear friend. We recorded our duet, a medley of “Let it Snow” and “Winter Wonderland,” in the studio together, and we have all these behind-the-scenes takes of us just being idiots, because we love improv’ing. All the stuff that you hear in the song – us saying, “Oh, the weather outside is rightful, it scares me” – is all improv. It’s what Neil and I do best and what makes us the happiest, and people love it, I think, because of the very silly improv side to it.

And Ariana DeBose is one of my best friends. We both began in this business at about the same time. I mean, she was a young, young dancer, and I was somebody who came out of Wall Street and finance before deciding to change careers and become a singer. We were both ensemble members in the 2011 New York Philharmonic production of “Company,” which is how I met Neil, Patti LuPone, Stephen Colbert, and Martha Plimpton. Ariana and I have climbed the ladder together since then and I was delighted to record “Winter Song” with her, because it’s a song we both love.

How did your cover of Ariana Grande’s holiday hit “Santa Tell Me” come about?

I called her. Ariana and I had first met during the 15th anniversary of “Wicked.” We spent a lot of time together. I went to visit her in London when they were filming “Wicked: Part 1.” This was before my album had come to fruition. We had dinner together in the middle of her filming the first part of the movie and that was when my brain started moving around, putting this album together. Time passed, and then I texted her about wanting to record my own version of “Santa Tell Me,” and we went back and forth with voice memos. Ariana is always traveling so we stay in touch through voice memos, which is lovely, because we still get to hear each other.

I told her I wanted to do it à la “Bridgerton,” with all of these crazy strings, and crazy harmonies and a string solo, and then I asked if that would be okay with her. About a minute later, I got a text from her and she was screaming, “Yes, yes, you have to do this!”

Going straight from eight shows a week on Broadway to a concert tour sounds daunting. How has that been for you?

I was fully done with “Hell’s Kitchen” at the end of November and then, less than a week later, I started this tour. I don’t recommend it to singers – it’s exhausting! But it’s also been a blast to be out with my music director and accompanist Mary-Mitchell Campbell, who was a co-producer on “Sleigh,” and my band – Rich Mercurio on percussion, Colin Sapp on guitar, Matt Aronoff on bass, and my Best Friend Marissa Rosen on vocals. I love doing concerts and our audiences have been great.

Do you have a preference between Broadway and concerts?

I love being on a Broadway stage and doing it for a year really fed a part of me that I needed. I hadn’t gotten to do it since COVID. I was doing “Wicked” when that happened, and everything shut down. But when the opportunity came around to tour this album, it made utter sense and I decided to devote a lot of December to this tour. I couldn’t do both at the same time, of course, but it was love from all angles from the “Hell’s Kitchen” team, which you don’t always get. Many of them are coming to see me when I’m in New York to finish the tour. They’ve become like family, and that, again, is not always the case on Broadway. I wasn’t eager to leave the show, but I knew it was time for me to hit the concert stage again. By the end of the first concert, I was like, “Oh man, this is one of the best shows that we’ve ever put together.”

Photo caption: Jessica Vosk performed a Celebrity Series of Boston concert at Berklee Performance Center earlier this month on her Sleigh tour. Photo by Robert Torres.