For Your GRAMMY® Consideration
Sondheim in the City
“The finest all-Sondheim album ever recorded,” was The Wall Street Journal’s verdict on Melissa Errico’s ecstatic, inward-turning Sondheim Sublime (released in 2018). Now, her new tribute to Broadway’s greatest songwriter, Sondheim In The City, changes tone to offer us a more outward-driven, kaleidoscopic street fair of New York scenes and moments – summoning back to life the poetic vision of a man who once confessed that his entire creative life had been spent in a twenty-block radius of Manhattan.
From the wide-eyed newly-wed for whom a basement room with a quarter-inch view is all that she needs, to the cynical nouveau from New Rochelle who can’t choose between uptown and downtown for her bitter pleasures, Melissa celebrates and embodies New York characters of all kinds – with a clear arc of passage along the way: Beginning in innocence (“What More Do I Need?” and “Another Hundred People”) passing into experience (“The Little Things You Do Together”, “Everybody Says Don’t”) and arriving at the plaintive, bittersweet ambivalence that is Sondheim’s tonic note on “Good Thing Going” and “Sorry-Grateful.” In the very end we rise, in a driving, deeply emotional, and redemptive version of “Being Alive”, to some kind of broken-hearted, Sondheimian hope.
Joined by the inimitable pianist Tedd Firth, the recording was produced by Rob Mathes (Sting, Elvis Costello) and features Lewis Nash on drums, David Finck on bass — plus strings & horns. Sondheim In The City is Melissa singing New York as it was, might still be, and will yet become, through the words and music of one of its most enduring poets.
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“Sondheim in the City, Melissa Errico’s tribute to Sondheim’s urbanity, feels like a New York house tour of thrill and heartbreak. In songs like the jangly ‘Another Hundred People,’ the exuberant ‘What More Do I Need?’ and the dry, disappointed ‘It Wasn’t Meant to Happen,’ Errico, one of Sondheim’s deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters, evokes both the city and cabaret style at its best. On the pristine recording you can almost hear the martini glasses clink — and shatter.”
– The New York Times
‘Sondheim in the City’ takes the Musical Theatre compilation album to a new level.
Highlights include the opening track ‘Dawn’, originally written in 1992 for the unproduced movie musical Singing Out Loud, which perfectly evokes a crisp morning walking the streets of New York – the most successful arrangement on the album. ‘Opening Doors/What More Do I Need?’ combines the numbers from Merrily We Roll Along and Saturday Night respectively – the opening section is lightly orchestrated to the energetic ‘What More do I Need?’, which sees Errico at her most fiery – I would challenge you not to bop along! ‘Anyone Can Whistle’ is simple on paper, yet it takes great skill to make it feel as intimate and meaningful as Errico does here.
The others stars of this album are the arrangements by Tedd Firth and Rob Mathes. You’d think these have always been jazz standards rather than Broadway numbers. This is a jazz/Musical Theatre album that is sure to be a favourite of fans of either genre while also staying true to the source material.
– Gramophone Magazine
“With Sondheim In The City comes a short film for her version of ‘Good Thing Going’ from his magnum opus, Merrily We Roll Along. Drawing on Annie Hall (her fashion certainly takes a cue from Diane Keaton’s Oscarwinning role) and French new wave, the dramatic ‘Good Thing Going’ mini movie reflects on the dissolution of a romance between an actress and her director. Errico’s phrasing imbues the tale with the bittersweet sense that perhaps this relationship was bound to fail from the start — but still worth mourning.”
– Billboard Magazine
“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.”
– Broadway World
“Melissa Errico is the ‘Sondheim Woman’ in Sondheim In The City. Devoted to Stephen Sondheim’s songs about New York – from the beginning of his career to its climaxes – Melissa’s latest album highlights Sondheim’s artistry while she inhabits one leading lady after another. From uptown to downtown and from sophisticated skyscraper heights to naïve basement depths, Sondheim In The City is a celebration of New York and its legendary musical theatre composer from the extraordinary Broadway star that Billboard magazine calls the ‘premier Sondheim interpreter.’”
– Concord Theatricals
