White Christmas: Monica Ramey Sings the Music of Irving Berlin

Friday, December 18, 2026

Nashville Jazz Workshop

Monica Ramey continues her year-long residency at the Nashville Jazz Workshop with a holiday evening devoted to the man who wrote the most recorded Christmas song in history, and about a thousand other songs you already know by heart.

Irving Berlin was born Israel Beilin in Russia in 1888 and came to New York as a small child. He grew up on the Lower East Side, left school early, and learned the music business from the ground up, singing for tips in Chinatown saloons and plugging songs for publishers. He never learned to read music properly and played piano largely in one key, and none of it slowed him down. Over roughly six decades he wrote both the words and the music to some 1,500 songs, among them Alexander's Ragtime Band, Blue Skies, Always, How Deep Is the Ocean, Cheek to Cheek, Puttin' On the Ritz, There's No Business Like Show Business, and God Bless America. Jerome Kern said it best: Irving Berlin has no place in American music, he is American music.

And then there is White Christmas. Berlin wrote it for the 1942 film Holiday Inn, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Bing Crosby's recording went on to become one of the best-selling singles ever made. It is a song about longing for a place you are not, which may be why it has never stopped landing. Monica builds the evening around it, weaving Berlin's holiday songs together with the standards that made him the most enduring songwriter of the American century.

It is the Friday before Christmas, in the Jazz Cave, with one of Nashville's finest voices and a songbook everyone in the room grew up with. Bring the people you like most.

This is the sixth show of Monica's year-long residency at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. Show time is 7:30 PM, doors open at 7:00 PM.

About Monica Ramey

Nashville Scene's Ron Wynn put it simply: Monica Ramey has "a real feel for and understanding of the jazz tradition." And that's exactly right, though it barely scratches the surface.

A native of Francesville, Indiana, Monica grew up singing and dancing on stage alongside her mother, a music teacher who directed her high school show choir. She studied Music Performance at Indiana State University and interned with the NARAS Foundation in Los Angeles before making her way to Nashville in 2000, where she discovered the Nashville Jazz Workshop and found a second family.

Her long musical partnership with the legendary jazz pianist Beegie Adair defined much of her career: together, they recorded multiple albums, sold out venues across the country, and became a fixture at Birdland Jazz Club in New York. The Tennessean once described Monica stepping onstage and opening her mouth to deliver "a smooth, velvety voice formed by years of study and countless performances, putting her own fresh spin on jazz standards." Broadway World called her vocals "impeccable" and named her "one of the best jazz vocalists."