Interview: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Treat with Melissa Errico

Ever the storyteller, a recent recording project casts Broadway veteran and cabaret’s sublime chanteuse Melissa Errico into the shadowy world of Film Noir. Called “The Film Noir Project,” it is a mix of classic titles drawn from Hollywood’s golden age, along with four new titles composed by Michel Legrand, David Shire, and Peter Foley. For more on the recording, which includes how to purchase a limited edition in vinyl, click here.

And in what can be a seasonal 180-degree turn from Noir’s dark world, Errico will perform a pair of holiday concerts, “Melissa Errico: Evergreen Holiday,” at Feinstein’s at Vitello’s in Studio City (LA) on December 21 and 22. 

Errico has been called one of the most acclaimed interpreters of the late Stephen Sondheim, most notably in her album “Sondheim Sublime,” which received high praise from the Wall Street Journal. “Sondheim Sublime” is the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded, a program of 15 songs in which radiantly warm singing and sensitive, intelligent interpretation are tightly and inseparably entwined.”

Melissa Errico talks with EDGE about her upcoming holiday concerts, her long-standing love of Film Noir, Sondheim, as well as recent & upcoming projects

EDGE: What’s the mood & environment you’re hoping to create with these two holiday concerts?

Melissa Errico: Two moods I suppose, the two basic Christmas (and holiday) ones: one about family and connection, the other about light in darkness. We all come together in December:  sometimes awkwardly, sometimes furiously, often happily; and the comedy of all that is part of my concert. (Including some Sondheim parodies that emphasize the losing-my-mind side of the holidays, like being up all-night assembling toys from Ikea for your kids.) But all winter festivals are about trying to keep the light alive when the sun dims and the cold comes, and I’m singing that mood too: even using “Evergreen”, Streisand’s beautiful song, as a kind of carol.