Brian Stokes Mitchell generally doesn't like watching his performances. "The only thing [I] see are the mistakes, the things that could be better," the Tony-winning actor-singer said in a phone interview from his New York home.

He's happy to report that when he saw and heard "Ring Christmas Bells," the CD and DVD of the concerts he did with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir last year, "I didn't find myself cringing.

"It was beautifully put together, beautifully shot, beautifully performed by the choir and orchestra," said Mitchell, who will be in Utah for signings Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. "It's a really terrific show."

Mitchell said he and the choir's music director, Mack Wilberg, hit it off instantly. The singer didn't want to put on just another holiday show and was pleased that Wilberg was of like mind. "I wanted to bring in music of all kinds and really be able to use my voice in a popular style, jazz, some vocalise, some legit baritone." "Ring Christmas Bells" presents Mitchell's award-winning voice in all those idioms, from the evergreen "Christmas Song" and "Sleigh Ride" to the singer's jazz-inflected arrangement of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

One of Mitchell's favorite memories of the project is brainstorming with Wilberg on a version of "The Friendly Beasts" that juxtaposes the sublime and the silly to exquisite effect. Mitchell wanted each animal in the carol to have a distinct character; he said Wilberg captured "all the whimsy, fun and beauty I heard in my mind."

Mitchell also is promoting Lights on Broadway With Brian Stokes Mitchell , an A-to-Z guide to theatrical lingo that's aimed at middle-schoolers. Text is by Harriet Ziefert, with a generous sprinkling of quotations from Broadway luminaries such as Harvey Fierstein, Stephen Sondheim and Patti LuPone; Elliot Kreloff's exuberant illustrations bring the book to life.

Mitchell wrote the introduction and postscript, as well as the "Z" entry -- "Zing!" -- and sings "I Was Here," an ode to the theater by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (best known for "Ragtime"). A portion of the proceeds benefits The Actors Fund, an organization Mitchell heads that assists performing-arts professionals.

Though he made his name as a leading man in musicals such as "Kiss Me Kate," "Ragtime" and "Man of La Mancha," Mitchell said he's been "on sabbatical" from Broadway since his son, Ellington, nearly 6, was born. Starring in an eight-performance-a-week show "kills my time with him," Mitchell said. Because he had to save his voice, "I'd often go a week or two without speaking to my wife," communicating with notes instead. "I want to be able to scream and yell and laugh and have fun."

Familiar ring » The Tabernacle Choir (on Deseret Book's Shadow Mountain imprint) also has released I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day , a children's book by choir announcer Lloyd Newell and wife Karmel, illustrated by Dan Burr. It's an expanded retelling of "Longfellow's Christmas," the David Warner script that actor Edward Herrmann read at last year's concerts; the book includes a DVD of Herrmann's performance with the choir, Orchestra at Temple Square and Bells on Temple Square.

"I've worked with some very big shows in my time," said Herrmann, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actor, in an interview from his Connecticut home. "But I've never been with quite so many people onstage before ... and I've never worked in such a virtually flawless atmosphere. If anything went wrong, I didn't know about it; there was no muss, fuss or hysteria."

The book and DVD relate the circumstances under which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem "Christmas Bells": His wife died in a fire, and two years later, their oldest son was critically wounded in the Civil War.

"We so often think of the 19th century -- even though we're looking at the pioneer days and what our forefathers and foremothers suffered -- in a rosy sort of way," Herrmann said. Contemporary Americans tend to think of the outcomes of historic wars as inevitable, but the outlook was much more dire at the time. "It was a terrible, terrible ordeal," he said of Longfellow's crisis, "but what came out of it is extraordinary and beautiful."