Eleri Ward To Celebrate Vinyl Edition Of Acoustic Sondheim Album 'Keep A Tender Distance At Joe's Pub, June 5

Singer/songwriter Eleri Ward will return to Joe's Pub in New York on Monday, June 5 at 7:00 PM to perform selections from her new album Keep A Tender Distance from GHOSTLIGHT RECORDS. Tickets, which are $40, are available HERE.

Keep A Tender Distance - the sublimely introspective folk guitar exploration of Stephen Sondheim's singular musical theater canon - is currently available on CD and in digital and streaming formats. The vinyl edition will be released on Friday, June 2 and is now available for pre-order. The album is the follow-up to A Perfect Little Death, her viral hit debut take on the Sondheim catalog. Stream or download the album, order the CD, or pre-order the vinyl at eleriward.lnk.to/KeepaTenderDistance.

Ward will celebrate the album with several stops on "The Tender Tour," including South Orange, NJ (5/19, SOPAC), Atlanta, GA (6/7, Out Front Theatre Company), Orlando, FL (6/8, Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater), and Miami, FL (6/10, The Hub at Temple Beth Am). The tour traveled the country earlier this year with stops in Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., and beyond. For ticketing info on the upcoming dates, please visit Eleri's website HERE.

According to The New York Times, "Among the qualities that Eleri Ward, a preternaturally gifted young singer whose guitar-based interpretations of Sondheim lit up last year's brilliant album A Perfect Little Death, and whose follow-up collection, Keep a Tender Distance, captures in her performances is the vast, unquenchable longing at the heart of the master's work. She has fused this emo Sondheim register with a familiar coffeehouse folk sound, adding delicate fingerpicking guitar accompaniment to support her limber, expressive soprano."

Keep A Tender Distance builds on its predecessor, yet for the new volume Eleri has profoundly expanded, deepened and matured her emotional takes on these theater standards. She brings her trademark swirling harmonies and lush phrasing to another 14 Sondheim compositions. Several selections can be heard in the high-profile Broadway returns of Sweeney Todd ("Johanna") and Merrily We Roll Along ("Not a Day Goes By"), in addition to the recent revivals of Into the Woods ("Stay with Me," "Agony," "I Know Things Now," "No One Is Alone") and Company ("Another Hundred People," "Marry Me a Little"). Along the way, she also brings her hypnotic interpretive sense to numbers from A Little Night Music ("The Miller's Son"), Assassins ("Unworthy of Your Love"), and Sunday in the Park with George ("Move On").

Keep A Tender Distance is produced by Allen Tate and Eleri Ward, and arranged by Eleri Ward, with string arrangements by Ellis Ludwig-Leone.

Eleri is coming off a triumphant national tour last summer opening for global superstar Josh Groban, alongside the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. She then launched right into the Off-Broadway production Only Gold at New York's MCC Theater, created by Kate Nash, Andy Blankenbuehler, and Ted Malawer.

After gaining a viral TikTok following, Eleri first released A Perfect Little Death on Ghostlight last year to great acclaim, and several sold-out shows at New York's Joe's Pub. The album was called "a harmonious marriage of musical theater and indie folk music, with hauntingly beautiful arrangements" by Forbes and "an incandescent new record, something genuinely new" from American Theatre Magazine. John Platt of WFUV Radio hailed the album as a "breathtaking, life-affirming gift." A Perfect Little Death is currently available on vinyl, CD and all streaming platforms.

"Making this second album has been entirely different than the first in many ways," Eleri explains, "first of which is: collaboration. A Perfect Little Death was recorded completely on my own, I arranged each song alone, and while it was mixed and mastered by my talented friend, Tom Deis, I had very clear ideas for how I wanted everything to be. With this new record, I created the arrangements myself, but went into each studio session with an open mind of what each song could ultimately be. My producer, Allen Tate, was an amazing sounding board for new ideas when I didn't have clarity off the bat for the song we were doing in the moment. On that note, working with Ellis Ludwig-Leone on string arrangements brought me so much joy, taking the six songs he worked on to a place my brain could never have imagined on my own. I went into recording this album with a lot of open space, not wanting to confine myself into any set arrangement, and that allowed for these collaborations to really bring everything to the next level."

"I pushed myself when it came to guitar and tried to take my chord choices to new places," Eleri continues. "Obviously there are string arrangements on six of the tracks which is a whole new world for me, and I also have a mix of electric guitar, keyboard, and banjo added to this album. I believe the heartspace of how I connect to this music remained the spine of how I created each of these arrangements, but how they came out and landed are far more versatile."

"In order to choose the songs for this second collection," she concludes, "I go for the compositions I love, feel connected with, and hear the arrangements for in my head. Inspiration never leads me astray, so that's what I follow. These were the songs that spoke with the most clarity and passion."

Eleri Ward is a New York City-based actor, singer, and musician. Her most recent EP, Friction, was released in 2021. She has been singing and acting since she was eight years old, and has always strived to carve out her own space with the uniqueness she brings to the theater. Eleri studied songwriting at Berklee College of Music before transferring and graduating from The Boston Conservatory with a BFA in Musical Theater and an emphasis in Songwriting, which shows itself clearly in the way she has taken on the Sondheim canon. www.eleriward.com

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