A Kim Pensyl Christmas

Drew Layman
Dec 26, 2025
5 min read

You often hear musicians talk about how seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show flipped a switch and set their musical lives in motion. For Kim Pensyl, the moment came a little differently. He saw Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass on television, performing songs like “The Lonely Bull,” “Spanish Flea,” and “Mexican Shuffle” in a bullring. It was colorful, theatrical, and evocative—and it inspired him. Pensyl was hooked, specifically on the trumpet, and maybe on the idea that pop accessibility and instrumental sophistication didn’t have to live in separate worlds.

Kim Pensyl

A Kim Pensyl Christmas

Optimism Incorporated – OP CD 3224

1989

A Kim Pensyl Christmas (My Gift) CD cover

That tension—between jazz discipline and pop instinct—matters when you listen to A Kim Pensyl Christmas. This is not a jazz musician dabbling in holiday music as a lark or a contractual obligation. It’s the work of someone who always believed instrumental music could—and maybe should—meet a broad audience halfway. A North High School graduate, Pensyl came up at a time when Columbus still quietly produced serious players who didn’t necessarily stay put. By the late 1970s, Pensyl was a key member of the Ohio State University Jazz Ensemble, studying under Tom Battenberg and Dr. Richard Burkart and playing alongside musicians like drummer Jim Rupp and trombonist John Fedchock. It was a deep bench, and one of the most accomplished college ensembles of its era.

Pensyl wasn’t just a section player. His compositions were already circulating within the ensemble. Pieces like “Frostbite,” and “Acorn’s Tavern” were performed at Mershon Auditorium, the Notre Dame Jazz Festival, and even the Montreux Jazz Festival, where his composition “The Wind and I” was documented on record. He was equally at home on trumpet and flugelhorn, and his writing suggested a composer who was already thinking orchestrally—even when working within a sextet or big band format.

1978 Ohio State University Jazz Ensemble

After OSU, his path was anything but linear. There were stints with the Guy Lombardo Orchestra, Las Vegas work with the Freddie Bell Show, pop and R&B side projects, and eventually a pivot that would define his public identity: Pensyl moved away from trumpet as his primary instrument and toward keyboards, composition, and production. By the mid-1980s, he was functioning as a one-man operation—writing, arranging, producing, and performing everything himself.

That independence became his calling card. Working out of a basement studio, Pensyl recorded a demo tape that caught the attention of a tiny Southern California label called Optimism Incorporated. The tape was so polished that it was released as-is in 1988 as Pensyl Sketches #1. Against all reasonable expectations, it took off, climbing to No. 3 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz chart and earning a Top 10 placement for the year.

The Holiday Inn on the Lane, where Pensyl had a residency in the late '80s

The Sketches albums are very much of their time—synthesizers, programmed rhythms, smooth jazz textures—but they're also undeniably personal. Pensyl’s melodic sense and classical grounding kept the music from dissolving into sonic wallpaper. Pensyl Sketches #2 and #3: The Emerald Sunrise followed quickly, the latter signaling a partial return to acoustic instrumentation. Meanwhile, Pensyl remained a familiar local presence, playing regular gigs at the Holiday Inn on the Lane and later at Bexley’s Monk, even as his records circulated nationally.

It was in this context—successful, visible, and creatively autonomous—that A Kim Pensyl Christmas appeared in November 1989. Originally released on Optimism, the album was a seasonal outlier even by contemporary jazz standards. Built almost entirely from synthesizers and electronic orchestration, it approaches traditional carols with restraint rather than flash. Pensyl plays it straight—sometimes almost austerely—favoring mood, texture, and melodic clarity over virtuosity. The program weaves in two Pensyl originals: the opening “Celebration Prelude,” which sets an anticipatory tone, and “My Gift,” which appears among the standards rather than apart from them. Together, they reinforce the sense that Pensyl viewed the album as a unified seasonal work, not a loose collection of familiar tunes.

The cover of the GRP reissue of A Kim Pensyl Christmas

For fans expecting the rhythmic flash of the Sketches albums, A Kim Pensyl Christmas could feel subdued, even antiseptic. Critics were split. Some found it tasteful and imaginative, noting the care in the arrangements and Pensyl’s obvious affection for the material. Others felt the arrangements were gaudy and overblown at times. Most found the simpler, piano-based arrangements to be the most satisfying.

Kim Pensyl outside the Blue Note Jazz Club

Still, the album sold—well enough, in fact, to earn Pensyl a NAIRD Indie Award nomination for Best Seasonal Album in 1990. By then, he had signed a seven-year, seven-album deal with GRP Records, the jazz-leaning powerhouse home to Chick Corea, Larry Carlton, and a roster that conferred instant legitimacy. GRP reissued A Kim Pensyl Christmas in 1993 alongside volume 3 of its Christmas Collection series, which included Pensyl’s version of “Joy to the World,” giving the album wider national exposure.

The irony is that the reissue likely received more attention than the original release, but not necessarily more enthusiasm. GRP seemed content to fulfill contractual obligations through repackaging rather than investing in new studio projects. A 1994 compilation of the three Pensyl Sketches albums would mark the end of Pensyl’s relationship with the label. He moved on to Shanachie later that year.

Today, A Kim Pensyl Christmas sits in a strange but revealing place in his discography. It’s not the record that best represents his chops, nor the one most likely to convert skeptics. But it does capture something essential about Pensyl as a musician: his interest in orchestration, his willingness to embrace technology, and his belief that accessibility and seriousness aren’t mutually exclusive—even if the result lands closer to New Age than jazz.

For Columbus listeners, the album also serves as a reminder of a period when local musicians could move fluidly between basements, ballrooms, national charts, and holiday compilations without ever fully leaving town behind. Pensyl was never a scene figure in the conventional sense, but his career reflects a particular kind of Midwestern professionalism—deeply trained, stylistically adaptable, and quietly ambitious.

Whether A Kim Pensyl Christmas feels like a seasonal pleasure or a curious artifact probably depends on your tolerance for synthesizers and your expectations of jazz. Either way, it remains a distinctive chapter in a career that doesn’t fit neatly into any one category—and that, in itself, feels very Columbus.