Manhattan Transfer: no wintry chill here

Anyone who’s spent too much for tickets to see a much-admired band from his or her youth performing tepid, living-jukebox versions of its hits knows that longevity alone is no guarantee of continued greatness.

Fortunately, there are significant exceptions. In pop music there are the Rolling Stones -- continuing, after more than four decades, to produce new reasons to admire the group. And in jazz there is the Manhattan Transfer, now in its fourth decade and, like the Stones, living testimony to the creative potential of the right kind of musical togetherness.

On Wednesday night at Disney Hall, the veteran vocal quartet -- Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Alan Paul and Tim Hauser -- applied its marvelously versatile four-part harmony style to an evening of holiday music. In the process, the singers displayed the uniquely entertaining blend of collective and individual skills that have sustained their long, productive ensemble career.

Accompanied by a string group and a big band (a virtual all-star collective of Southland jazz players), the Transfer sang its way through a program reaching from carols (“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”) to classics (“The Christmas Song,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”). There were impressive solo spots from each of the singers.

Paul started by asking members of the capacity crowd to snap their fingers and sing a rhythmic riff while he bopped his way through “White Christmas.” Bentyne rivaled Eartha Kitt with a diva-ish rendering of “Santa Baby.” Siegel maneuvered smoothly through the arching melody of “Sleigh Ride,” while Hauser aced the swinging blues rhythms of Charles Brown’s “Merry Christmas, Baby.”

And, of course, there were the Transfer classics: a superb (even by the Transfer’s high standards) reading of their complex, Grammy-winning version of Joe Zawinul’s “Birdland”; Siegel’s super-heated gospel take on “Operator”; the cool harmonies and driving swing of “Route 66,” “Java Jive” and “Airmail Special.”

Finishing the program, the Transfer affirmed the festive holiday mood of the concert by bringing three of their daughters on stage to join in singing “Good King Wenceslas” -- an appropriately familial climax to a warm, memorable performance by a group that still has miles to go.