Melissa Errico, the Tony-nominated Broadway actress and singer, will celebrate the release of her latest album, “Sondheim in the City,” at 54 Below, the New York supper club, next week.
Melissa Errico in concert with jazz trumpeter Bruce Harris
Released in February, the album, 54 Below said, “is the Sondheim of smart, sophisticated New York, the Sondheim of the quick, witty, sardonic, love-seeking and sex-driven city that he recorded and worked in through his long life.”
Accompanied by her music director, Tedd Firth, and four other musicians, Errico will perform May 7, 8 and 9 at 7 p.m.; the May 9 concert also will be livestreamed.
In a recent email interview with Forbes, Errico discussed the difference between her two Sondheim albums, “Sondheim Sublime,” released in 2018, and “Sondheim in the City.”
“They’re different rooms in Sondheim’s house, so to speak. ‘Sondheim Sublime’ was all about the inner, enchanted, spell-casting side of Sondheim. I wanted to make people, including myself, aware of his gifts as a kind of mesmerizing mystical mind, more than as a sharp-edged social commentator.
“‘Sondheim In the City’ is all about the outward-facing windows: It’s a (mostly) celebratory record with a carnival touch, full of the sounds and characters and noise of New York,” she said.
Asked why Sondheim’s music is especially important today, Errico said, “Everybody always knew that Sondheim was witty, of course, from the first time he wrote a lyric. Pretty, witty and bright, as he wrote (in a lyric for West Side Story I’m told he didn’t like afterwards). But right now, Steve seems so wise. You want to know how marriage often feels? Listen to ‘Sorry, Grateful.’ Want to know what it feels like to be an artist while still trying to be a connected person? Listen to ‘Finishing The Hat.’
“You want counsel about continuing to be an artist in the face of adversity? Listen to, or better, sing ‘Move On.’ You just never come to the end of the knowledge of life he somehow crafted into beautiful Broadway songs.”
Errico is well-known for making her performances local.
“I always try to make sure that wherever I go , I don’t just do the same setlist, but adapt it to the tastes and history of the local audience. So, if I’m singing in Bucks County, I make sure to sing songs that came out of all the Broadway people who were in Bucks, and even read passages of writing from the theater writers, like S.J. Perelman, who lived there.
“Or if I’m in Paris, I make sure to sing in French, even if it takes some study. But we have fun doing it!”
Singer Melissa Errico in Central Park
To make her upcoming 54 Below shows local, Errico said, “When I’m singing in New York I always try to tell New York stories, about my family’s Ziegfeld Follies background, or about racing into New York as a teenager to change clothes in the train station, or about my first apartment and dating the doorman in the building. Funny stories that everyone can relate to. And I also try to bring in unexpected guests, a very New York thing. There will be surprising visitors at 54 Below, people just knocking on the door and borrowing a cup of music, so to speak.”
She also said she loves “the great women of New York, my local saints, Nora Ephron, Laura Nyro, Judy Collins, Joan Didion, Dorothy Parker. They fill my head, so they fill my show as well. I love to have just the right quote from just the right writer to set off a song.”
Responding to a recent survey by the Recording Industry Association of America that found that Americans bought 43 million vinyl records in 2023, six million more than CDs purchased, Errico suggested “the vinyl sound is warmer and somehow more human, and we’re all desperate right now for a pleasurable human touch. It’s why people still turn out to nightclubs.”
Finally, asked about her perspective on New York today, she said, “There’s so many signs of the very thing that drew me to make this album in the first place — the vibration and the ecstatic potential of Manhattan. Look at Marilyn Maye celebrating her 96th birthday, the beautiful blooms at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Eric Fischl’s ravishing new painting exhibit and a bold array of new musicals on Broadway. I see hope everywhere!”
A wide-ranging performer, Errico is a specialist in the music of Sondheim and Michel Legrand. First known for her starring roles on Broadway, including My Fair Lady, High Society, Anna Karenina, White Christmas, Dracula and Les Misérables, Errico has also starred in “Central Park West,” and appeared in “Blue Bloods” and “The Knick.”
She is also an essayist for The New York Times and is currently working on expanding her essays about a singer’s strange life on the stage and road into a book.
