NEW YORK — Christine Baranski was in the playground outside St. Matthew’s Church in Bedford, New York, about three years ago when she came across Matthew Guard, artistic director of the Grammy-nominated Skylark Vocal Ensemble.

“I love choral music,” she told him.

An Emmy- and Tony-Award winning actor, Baranski went on to attend some of his concerts.

“I was a fangirl basically,” she recalled. “And I think we just said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do something together?’”

Baranski agreed to narrate a music-and-spoken word version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” last December at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, which owns the original manuscript of the 1843 classic. A recording was made last June at the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and released Dec. 4 on the LSO Live label.

She will perform it again with the group on Thursday night at the Morgan, which is displaying the manuscript through Jan. 11, and again the following night at The Breakers in Newport, R.I., where she will again portray the acerbic Agnes van Rhijn when Season 4 of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” starts filming season four on Feb. 23.

“I have this thing about keeping language alive, keeping beautiful, well-written language,” she said. “Dickens, Stoppard, Shakespeare. We’re getting awfully lazy in our use of the English language.”

She compliments Julian Fellowes, creator of “The Gilded Age” and “Downton Abbey,” for distinguished prose.

“I think he’d play Agnes if he could,” she said. “He gives her the witty stuff.”

Baranski leaned on the skills that earned her an Emmy for “Cybill” and Tonys for “The Real Thing” and “Rumors.”

“You get to bring to life a lot of different characters, none the least of which is Ebenezer,” she said at the library this month. “It’s wonderful for an actor to differentiate in as subtle a way as possible these different characters. As an acting piece, it’s wonderful. And not many women have done it. It’s been done by Alistair Cooke and Patrick Stewart and Patrick Page and all these great actors — but I get to do it with a chorus.”

Guard weaves in underscoring by composer Benedict Sheehan with Baranski’s words and 10 carols that include “Silent Night” and “Deck the Halls” plus “Auld Lang Syne.”

Trimming was needed

Reciting the entire story would have created a Wagnerian-length evening.

“This manuscript itself is about 30,000 words and we needed about 5,000 to make it a concert length,” Guard said. “I tried to create space in the narrative for obvious musical exclamation points or emotional feelings, almost like arias in an opera.”

Sheehan had worked together with Guard on a 2020 recording “Once Upon a Time” that weaved together the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”

“I said why don’t you commission me to write choral underscoring for the narrative that can kind of stitch together these different choral pieces?” Sheehan said.

Baranski got narration experience in 2023 when she replaced Liev Schreiber with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall for Beethoven’s “Egmont.”

“I could do this the rest of my career,” she thought at the time. “Just put me in a concert hall surrounded by great musicians.”

Preparing for ‘Gilded Age’ return

After working with dialect coach Howard Samuelsohn, Baranski practiced on Zoom to hone a 19th-century voice and avoid cliché.

“I said this is a good warm up for Aunt Agnes because it’s that kind of speech we were taught at Juilliard,” the 73-year-old Baranski said, recalling lessons from Edith Skinner decades ago.

“Sometimes it’s just a question of modulating your voice, just different rhythms and staccato or legato,” she said. “I want the voice of the Ghost of Christmas past to be disembodied … ethereal.”

She didn’t have an urge to join in on the carols.

“We take from each other,” she said. “When the chorus first heard my version of it, I think it subtly influenced the feeling of it and I take from the mood of the carol and bring it into my interpretation.”

“It’s a really exciting back-and-forth actually,” Guard said. “It’s not really totally clear who’s driving the bus at times.”

Possibly an annual holiday entertainment

Baranski hopes the project has a future.

“We want to film this someday in the Morgan,” she said. “Make this a yearly event at the Morgan, because here’s the manuscript and people. It’s just one of those things like Handel’s `Messiah’ or `The Nutcracker.’”

She’s going to gift the CD to her grandchildren, four boys ranging from ages 2 to 12. Among her previous holiday experiences was portraying Martha May Whovier in the 2000 movie “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

“They’re curiously not interested in my even being Martha May in `The Grinch,’” Baranski explained. “Their friends sometimes say: `That’s your grandmother.’ But I just want to be their grandma — do you know what I mean — and not somebody?”

NEW YORK — There are giants, and then there is Donna Summer. The Queen of Disco and then some, known for such timeless tunes as “Love to Love You Baby,” “I Feel Love,” “Bad Girls,” “Dim All the Lights,” “On the Radio” and “She Works Hard for the Money,” has been posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the hall said.

Summer, who died in 2012 at age 63, was welcomed into the Songwriters Hall on Monday at a ceremony at The Butterfly Room at Cecconi’s in Los Angeles. It was led by Academy Award-winning songwriter Paul Williams. Summer’s husband, Bruce Sudano, and their daughters, Brooklyn Sudano and Amanda Sudano Ramirez, were in attendance.

“Donna Summer is not only one of the defining voices and performers of the 20th century; she is one of the great songwriters of all time who changed the course of music,” said Williams in a statement. “She wrote timeless and transcendent songs that continue to captivate our souls and imaginations, inspiring the world to dance and, above all, feel love.”

Summer's smooth blend of R&B, soul, pop, funk, rock, disco and electronica launched numerous chart-topping hits in the ’70s and ’80s as well as three multiplatinum albums. She won five Grammys. She was unstoppable — both as a performer and a writer.

“It’s important to me because I know how important it was for Donna,” said Sudano in a press release. “The backstory is, with all the accolades that she received over her career, being respected as a songwriter was always the thing that she felt was overlooked. So, for her to be accepted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame I know that she’s very happy … somewhere.”

The Songwriters Hall of Fame was established in 1969. A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.

The annual Songwriters Hall of Fame gala does not usually include posthumous inductions; those are reserved for separate events.

Songwriter Pete Bellotte — known for his work with Summer on “Hot Stuff,” “I Feel Love” and “Love To Love You Baby” — is a current nominee for the 2026 Songwriters Hall of Fame class. “Love To Love You Baby” was co-written with Summer and producer Giorgio Moroder. One of Summer’s best-known hits, the song has been sampled many times, including in tracks by Beyoncé, LL Cool J and Timbaland.

The 2026 inductees will be announced early next year.

Ryan Coogler’s bluesy vampire thriller “Sinners,” the big screen musical “Wicked: For Good” and the Netflix phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters” are all a step closer to an Oscar nomination. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released shortlists for 12 categories Tuesday, including for best song, score, international and documentary film, cinematography and this year’s new prize, casting.

“Sinners” and “Wicked: For Good” received the most shortlist mentions with eight each, including makeup and hair, sound, visual effects, score, casting and cinematography. Both have two original songs advancing as well. For “Wicked” it’s Stephen Schwartz’s “The Girl in the Bubble” and “No Place Like Home.” For “Sinners,” it’s Ludwig Göransson, Miles Caton and Alice Smith’s “Last Time (I Seen the Sun),” and Göransson and Raphael Saadiq’s “I Lied to You.”

The “KPop Demon Hunters” hit “Golden,” by EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick, was another shortlisted song alongside other notable artists like: Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams”; John Mayer, Ed Sheeran and Blake Slatkin for the “F1” song “Drive”; Sara Bareilles, Brandi Carlile and Andrea Gibson for “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” from “Come See Me In the Good Light”; and Miley Cyrus, Simon Franglen, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for “Dream as One” from “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” Diane Warren also might be on her way to a 17th nomination with “Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless.”

One of the highest profile shortlist categories is the best international feature, where 15 films were named including “Sentimental Value” (Norway), “Sirât” (Spain), “No Other Choice” (South Korea), “The Secret Agent” (Brazil), “It Was Just an Accident” (France), “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia), “Sound of Falling” (Germany) and “The President’s Cake” (Iraq).

Notable documentaries among the 15 include “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” “The Perfect Neighbor,” “The Alabama Solution,” “Come See Me in the Good Light,” “Cover-Up” and Mstyslav Chernov’s “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a co-production between the Associated Press and PBS Frontline.

The Oscars’ new award for casting shortlisted 10 films that will vie for the five nomination slots: “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “One Battle After Another,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Sinners,” “Sirāt,” “Weapons,” and “Wicked: For Good.” Notably “Jay Kelly and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” did not make the list.

Composers who made the shortlist for best score include Göransson (“Sinners”), Jonny Greenwood (“One Battle After Another”), Max Richter (“Hamnet”), Alexandre Desplat (“Frankenstein”) and Kangding Ray (“Sirāt”).

For the most part, shortlists are determined by members in their respective categories, though the specifics vary from branch to branch: Some have committees, some have minimum viewing requirements.

As most of the shortlists are in below-the-line categories celebrating crafts like sound and visual effects, there are also films that aren’t necessarily the most obvious of Oscar contenders like “The Alto Knights,” shortlisted in hair and makeup, as well as the widely panned “Tron: Ares” and “The Electric State,” both shortlisted for visual effects. “Tron: Ares” also made the lists for score and song with Nine Inch Nails’ “As Alive As You Need Me To Be.”

The lists will narrow to five when final nominations are announced on Jan. 22. The 98th Oscars, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will air live on ABC on March 15 at 7 p.m.