Review: NEW YEAR'S EVE WITH SETH MACFARLANE AND THE BOSTON POPS at Symphony Hall

Seth MacFarlane was in great voice when he took the stage at Symphony Hall recently for his sold-out New Year’s Eve concert with the Boston Pops, even if it wasn’t his most familiar voice.

A legion of loyal fans know the five-time Emmy Award-winning actor, animator, producer, director, and comedian best as the creator and star of the television series “Family Guy,” where he voices twisted tyke Stewie and his goofy dad Peter Griffin, and as co-creator and star, as Stalwart Stan and Roger the Alien, of TV’s “American Dad!”  The Connecticut native and Rhode Island School of Design graduate also co-wrote, co-produced, directed, and starred in the Massachusetts-set films “Ted” and its sequel “Ted 2.”

When it comes to music, MacFarlane likes to work with the best in the business, and plenty of them. As he told this writer in a 2016 interview, he often employs 60- to 85-piece orchestras to score his film and television projects.

“I do believe when you’re watching a TV series, especially an animated one, an orchestra just makes it all seem slightly more important. And it also allows you to do big musical numbers, which is something I love,” he said. “I work with a handful of great composers, too, who paint with every color an orchestration can give you.”

That was certainly true in Boston, where cameos by some of his animated characters were well received, as was his Pops program which put the 52-year-old’s Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra-style vocals on full display from the first note of his opening number “Days of Wine and Roses,” the Academy Award-winning Henry Mancini song with lyrics by Johnny Mercer from the 1962 film of the same name.

MacFarlane has released nine studio albums, beginning with 2011’s “Music Is Better Than Words” and including his Grammy Award-nominated 2015 release “No One Ever Tells You.” His most recent album, “Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements,” was released June 6 of last year through Republic and Verve Records and features a dozen arrangements by Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, and others of songs Sinatra had planned to perform but never did. It followed MacFarlane’s 2018 acquisition of the complete Sinatra music archive from the legendary singer’s family and estate.

And so the brown-eyed singer made sure there was plenty of Ol’ Blue Eyes on his set list from Brookline native Conrad Salinger’s exquisitely arranged “The Girl Next Door,” written by Sinatra in 1954, to the brass-heavy Bill Mays arrangement of “Just in Time,” by Jules Styne with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, introduced by Judy Holliday and Sydney Chaplin in the Broadway musical “Bells are Ringing” in 1956 and later recorded by Sinatra and Bobby Darin. The song, of course, is best known these days for providing the moniker for the Darin jukebox musical at New York’s Circle in the Square Theatre.

Under the baton of guest conductor Joel McNeely, MacFarlane’s music director, the Pops were joined by the singer and his tight seven-piece band including Dan Higgins on alto sax, trumpeter Rob Schaer, trombonist Alex Illes, Tom Ranier on piano and celeste, guitarist Scott Johnson, drummer Ryan Shaw, and Michael Valerio on bass for additional Broadway selections like Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s “Almost Like Being in Love,” featuring another full-bodied Salinger arrangement, from their 1947 musical “Brigadoon,” and a beautifully sung rendition of “I Have Dreamed” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I.”

The evening’s second half got underway with MacFarlane’s deep baritone gently caressing “I Thought About You,” the 1939 Jimmy Van Heusen ballad, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, which that same year became the first song ever recorded by the legendary Dinah Shore, before Sinatra did it on his 1956 album, “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!” MacFarlane followed that up with Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “Bewitched” from 1941, and Lew Pollack’s 1914 ragtime tune “That’s A-Plenty,” with lyrics by Ray Gilbert.

MacFarlane welcomed “special guest” Liz Gillies to the stage for some well chosen duets and playful banter. The singer, who made her Broadway debut in the short-lived Jason Robert Brown musical “13” in 2008 and later co-starred with Ariana Grande in the Nickelodeon sitcom “Victorious,” blended winningly with the headliner on “The Heather on the Hill” from “Brigadoon,” “The Beautiful Briny,” by Robert and Richard Sherman, from Walt Disney’s “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” and “Some Enchanted Evening” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific.”

Clearly enjoying his latest Symphony Hall appearance, MacFarlane offered up not one but two encores – “June in January,” a hit 1934 song by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin about finding summer love and warmth in winter, made famous by Bing Crosby, and “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road”), a Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer tune from the same year that would become one of Sinatra’s signature songs – providing the perfect closer to a memorable evening with the Pops.

Photo caption: Seth MacFarlane in concert with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall on December 31, 2025. Photo credit: Winslow Townson.