Jazz vocalist Kim Nalley in "Ella: The American Dream"

Bay Area jazz singer  Kim Nalley has built a solid Sonoma County following with her renditions of Billie Holiday classics and other standards.

Nalley opens her new tribute show, “Ella: The American Dream,” singing Ella Fitzgerald favorites, at 8:30 p.m. Dec. 31 at the Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. $55-$60.

Written by Nalley, the show takes audiences back to 1930s Harlem, the Savoy Ballroom and the swing era, incorporating new historical information about Fitzgerald. Nalley considers herself a historian and musical interpreter, rather than an impersonator.

“I was a history major at Cal, so I am more than qualified to go to the library and research this stuff,”  Nalley once told me. “I noticed when I was doing productions with other people about famous singers, they’d get the facts all wrong.”

The show also continues Jan. 2-17 at the Cinnabar. $28-$35. 763-8920, cinnabartheater.org.