Dave Koz and Friends Christmas Tour 2026 — Balboa Theatre, San Diego

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December leaves gaps in people. You notice them in the car, or standing in a parking lot at night, and no amount of mall music fills them, because mall music was never trying to.

This is the annual show that does. Smooth jazz and holiday arrangements played by a bandleader who brings friends every year, and the friends are always the kind of players who make you sit up straighter without knowing why you did. The room does work too — a theater from 1924, ornate plaster overhead, acoustics from an era when a hall had to carry sound on its own. The lobby fills with people dressed up for the first time since Thanksgiving.

The Balboa Theatre downtown, doors at 6:30 PM, show at 7:30 PM.

This is the show your parents take you to the first year you are old enough to appreciate it, and the show you take them to the first year you realize they need it. Do not wait for the second one.