Sondheim
“Errico is the finest interpreter of Sondheim’s music in America today”
— Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Sondheim in the City
After the critical triumph of her Sondheim Sublime album– called “the finest all Sondheim recording ever made” by the Wall Street Journal – Melissa Errico returns to her home at 54 Below and to her favorite songwriter with an entirely new program of Sondheim songs, celebrating her new album (released February 16, 2024 on Concord) and a different side of Steve, praised in The New York Times as “a New York house tour of thrill and heartbreak… from one of Sondheim’s deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters.”
Sondheim In the City 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. From the anthem of city busyness “Another Hundred People” to the bittersweet hymns of city marriage, “Sorry, Grateful” and “Good Thing Going, ”with time for hardboiled surprises like “ Uptown, Downtown” and surprisingly soft-centered ballads like “All That I Need” and “Dawn,” Melissa will sound out New York as she rounds out her portrait of Stephen—and, as always in an Errico show, there will be smart talk from this celebrated New York Times columnist to go along with her sublime singing. Come hear why BroadwayWorldsays that Melissa Errico is “a poet, a painter, a walking work of art that lives and breathes to tell stories, and we all the lucky benefactors of her passion.”
Music directed by Tedd Firth, and featuring a quartet of uber- talented musicians, including celebrated jazz trumpeter Bruce Harris.
Featured Concerts
A Manhattan Valentine
"Sondheim in the City" Album Release
February 14-18, 2024 | Birdland Jazz Club, New York City
An Acoustic Evening
with Sondheim and Melissa
March 22, 2024 | The Green Room 42, New York City
Reviews
The wonderful thing about Melissa Errico is that her intellect and refinement are so much a part of who she is that she doesn’t have to dress it up – all she has to do is bring it into the room. Also, all she has to do is adorn those qualities with the right colleagues. Tedd Firth. Michel Legrand. Adam Gopnik. Stephen Sondheim. In Sondheim In The City, featuring Mr. Firth’s fine jazz treatments for songs from not-quite-exclusively Manhattan-based musicals, Melissa Errico has captured the feel of the Metropolitan lifestyle that Stephen Sondheim very clearly adored, and wanted to bring to life in his stories. The listener of the music of Melissa’s burg will feel the concrete beneath their feet, envision the lights of the horizon line, and live (for 57 sublime minutes) inside of the most magical reveries of the city… Producer Rob Mathes and Concord Theatricals have a triumph on their hands with Sondheim In The City, an album that should make Sondheim lovers out of Errico fans, and Errico devotees out of Sondheim aficionados. It is definitely an album to put on your “must have” list. On this 57-minute recording, Errico et al do themselves proud, they do Mr. Sondheim honor, and they do The City just right. But let’s be honest, here: Melissa Errico always does it just right.
—Erin Samms, Broadway World
Errico’s warmth and maturity are pervasive. Her lyric interpretation of the lyrics comes from experience. Songs that have quite often arrived upset are here tempered with perspective. Expectations are fewer, appreciation greater. Errico doesn’t sound insensitive; she sounds fortified. There’s even a touch of sophisticated ennui. “Dawn” (from the unproduced film, Singing Out Loud) arrives on effortless long notes with vibrato tails. Bruce Harris’ evocative, muted trumpet adds a patina of noir. A medley of “Opening Doors” (Merrily We Roll Along) and “What More Do I Need?” (Saturday Night) resonates with recollection. It opens with Firth’s tender piano, then swings as if to say “that was then, this is now.” Her stop/start phrasing almost giggles. “Take Me to the World” (Evening Primrose) wafts in on Matt Munisteri’s deft guitar and Lewis Nash’s supple percussion. Firth’s piano adds dappled shadows. “Can That Boy Foxtrot!” (cut from Follies) is here, for possibly the first time, a foxtrot! Instead of unbridled heat, we hear the admiration expressed by a woman who’s been around the block. Imagine Vera Simpson in Pal Joey singing it about Joey. (Errico could play that role.) “Anyone Can Whistle” (Anyone Can Whistle) is as unfussy and limpid as its aspiration. “Good Thing Going” (Merrily We Roll Along) is a slow stroll. Her phrasing makes it seem as though she’s conjuring up specific moments. She’s melancholy, earnest, resigned. “Uptown, Downtown” (cut from Follies) is sophisticated, almost churlish. The brass punctuates. Errico could be performing as one of Truman Capote’s Swans. “It Wasn’t Meant to Happen” (cut from Follies) features the same urbanity. Octave changes feel like pricking thorns. The song is rueful. “Being Alive” (Company) does not, as is common, painfully swell to the rafters. It’s a recognition of a life with perhaps a touch of advice. Melissa Errico knows who she is now, and it shows.
—Alix Cohen, Cabaret Scenes
Melissa Sings Sondheim
This was the heartfelt verdict that was given to Melissa Errico’s 2018 album Sondheim Sublime.
Now, after multiple sold-out engagements in New York, San Francisco, London, Washington, DC, and more, Tony Award-nominated Errico offers those songs and her unique vision of Broadway’s greatest living songwriter to concert audiences everywhere, bringing her gorgeous voice, and unique and unpredictable intelligence, wit and mischief to the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim.
With her special mix of smart talk and passionate singing, Melissa Sings Sondheim is guaranteed to be the concert or cabaret event of any season.
Errico brings her glamour, gorgeous silvery voice, and the immaculate vocal style that Sondheim loved, all to bear in a concert of the greatest songs of the greatest Broadway composer of his time. From “Send In The Clowns” to “No One Is Alone”, Melissa will sing all the Sondheim standards, and offer stories and insights from her decades’ long relationship with the composer. This is Melissa’s bread and butter, or maybe toast and caviar, show. It received rave reviews in New York and London and Sondheim himself has been directly involved as both consultant and contributor. It is a “caberessay”- not just a set list of Sondheim songs – but a show where Melissa discussed Sondheim’s craft, his biography, and his meanings with great comic insight. (charts already available for piano, jazz trio or 100-piece symphony).
“The best all-Sondheim album ever recorded, in which radiantly warm singing and sensitive, intelligent interpretation are tightly and inseparably entwined.”
– The Wall Street Journal
Reviews
“Errico is the finest interpreter of Sondheim’s music in America today”
— The New Yorker Magazine
“Melissa Errico has that very rare combination of beauty, humor, graceful motion on stage and, of course, the marvelous sound of her voice. She has a lovely soprano sound, and her voice rises to the occasion…her love of Sondheim’s work comes through in every song and her excellent enunciation makes each of Sondheim’s lyrics especially meaningful. She shows great confidence on stage and her Sondheim concert is meaningful, dramatic and often hilariously funny!”
– Cabaret Scenes
“Errico quickly had a full house eating out of her hand as she interspersed personal stories about her subject with 18 great Stephen Sondheim songs. Every number is a joy… There is a wonderful stillness about Errico when she performs, leaving the songs to speak for themselves, complementing the purity of her voice. Songs apart, she’s undeniably funny. The anecdotes tumble out in this well-rehearsed show with some inspired arrangements by musical director Tedd Firth.”
– Musical Theater Review
“This show took audiences on a journey that transcended vocal craft…with a magic that lifted the audience far off the ground. Through Errico’s unique combination of insights and talent (and also her surprising gift for gutsy humor), she manages to make Sondheim both profound & engaging and importantly, entertaining and enjoyable.”
– BroadwayWorld
“A glorious evening, a voice that knocks your socks off, a rippling stream of clear, crystal notes with a beautiful cadence and a purring, rich vibrato. Add to this her genuineness and humor and you’ve got a voice and personality that captivates the heart & soul.”
– Theater Pizzazz
“Many have found the sophistication and satire and mordant ambivalence in Stephen Sondheim. With this new CD, Melissa Errico finds a subtler, more soulful Sondheim than the one we thought we knew, sung with the intensity of a secret expressed at long last, with many moments of the sublime.”
– Theater Pizzazz
“Melissa Errico proved, not for the first time, that she’s a consummate interpreter of Sondheim…Errico gave a mesmerizing performance of “Losing My Mind.”
– Stage Buddy
“But it was her “Losing My Mind” from Sondheim’s Follies that had a lasting effect, beautifully done, with an arrangement by Doug Besterman.”
– Theater Pizzazz
“…Being surprised by the revelation that this was her Carnegie Hall debut made being in the audience even more of a privilege. She soloed only once, in Sondheim’s LOSING MY MIND from FOLLIES. With a gorgeous arrangement by Doug Besterman, Melissa’s performance was another that elicited a single-word note from our pen – BOOM!”
– BroadwayWorld
“Ninety minutes of pure bliss”
— Jeremy Chapman
“Everything she sings is sublime”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Melissa Errico is the best Sondheim interpreter today, and there was plenty of Sondheim last night, leading off with “Everybody Says Don’t,” and including “Sooner or Later” (which she knocked out of the park), “Not While I’m Around,” and a dazzling version of “I Remember” from Evening Primrose. And then there was an eight minute Sondheim Christmas parody with holiday lyrics by Adam Gopnik that had me nearly falling off my seat. Errico, as folks here know, was also close to Michel Legrand, ever since she starred in AMOUR, and has done a terrific all-Legrand album. She gave us Legrand’s classic, “What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life?” with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. She told us after arriving in LA this week, she had lunch with Alan, now 97 and still writing! In between the numbers, we got wonderful little commentaries on performing, momhood, travel, etc. After the show, we said hello to Melissa herself (!!!), a fitting end to a marvelous night.”
– Talkin’ Broadway
“She sings beautifully. Her familiarity with the way Sondheim’s songs work to advance character and story in vivo naturally informs her in vitro style, which is actorly to begin with. An attention to the lyrics and their rush of harsh “wisdoms” was Ms. Errico’s keynote. She refreshed cabaret staples, and lightly jazzed others, demonstrating how the meaning that is locked in tiny verbal gestures can be released with bold phrasing.”
– The New York Times
“Stunned into an amazing feeling of having witnessed something life changing, life enhancing and of incredible beauty…an unforgettable evening. Her artistry is beyond superb. She are quite the Maria Callas of the American Musical, illuminating this music like no other. The show was simply a lesson in greatness and interpretive genius, not to mention beautiful music making.”
— George Dansker, Opera News
“Isn’t it bliss? asks Stephen Sondheim rhetorically in his most famous creation ‘Send In The Clowns’ and bliss it is when the thrilling Melissa Errico lets loose for one golden hour of the greatest living composer’s work on her new album Sondheim Sublime.”
— Mark Shenton
“Just re-visited Melissa Errico’s Sondheim Sublime show at Live at Zedel: when she sings ‘Move On’ from Sunday in the Park with George this couldn’t be truer:
‘Anything you do
Let it come from you
Then it will be new
Give us more to see’
As she connects with Sondheim, we connect with her. It’s not just the ravishing, shimmering vocal tones Melissa Errico brings to Sondheim; it’s also the emotional and intellectual connections she makes to his ambivalence and contradictory feelings. It’s a masterclass in appreciating and understanding his work.”
— Mark Shenton
“Melissa Errico’s masterclass is a must-see for every cabaret wannabe as well as more experienced practitioners who think they’ve cracked this art form but haven’t. She is one of a kind.”
— Jeremy Chapman, Musical Theatre Review