Peter Sprague’s 40th annual outdoor Christmas Eve concert in Del Mar being moved to indoor Encinitas venue

Guitarist Peter Sprague is shown performing with singer Nina Francis. Because of the wet weather, the 2019 edition of Sprague's free, 40-year-old annual Christmas Eve concert is being moved from its usual open-air location in Del Mar to an indoor venue in nearby Encinitas.

The guitar great is moving his free annual outdoor holiday concert from its usual outdoor Del Mar location to an indoor venue in Encinitas

San Diego Union-Tribune

Dec. 23, 2019 4:56 PM PT

There are at least two key ingredients for a successful annual outdoor Christmas concert embraced by several generations of listeners — good music and dry seats.

That is why award-winning San Diego guitarist Peter Sprague announced Monday that the 40th edition of his free Christmas Eve concert at the L’Auberge Del Mar Amphitheatre is being moved inside to nearby Seaside Church in Encinitas.

The running time for the Dec. 24 event remains the same, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. So does the lineup, which teams former Chick Corea/Al Jarreau guitar ace Sprague with singers Leonard Patton, Rebecca Jade, Allison Adams Tucker, Nina Francis and Sprague’s daughter, Kate, 17.

The band for the concert will include such top area instrumentalists as pianist Danny Green, bassist Gunnar Biggs, drummer Duncan Moore, guitarist Fred Benedetti and Sprague’s brother, Tripp, on sax and flute.

Peter Sprague was barely out of his teens when he and his then-band, Dance of the Universe Orchestra, performed their first free outdoor Christmas Eve show in Del Mar in the late 1970s. Today’s concert will mark only the third time inclement weather has led to the concert being moved indoors.

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”