Interview: Melissa Errico is Singing Her Way Through Sondheim's 'Many Rooms'

Singer Melissa Errico deliciously re-interprets Sondheim’s catalogue of songs in her latest album, Sondheim in the City. Writer Erin Samms called the entire album “Errico triumphant.” Hot off a residency at Birdland, Errico is gearing up for even more Sondheim-themed shows in New York City, playing next at the Green Room 42 on March 22 for Sondheim’s birthday, and then doing another run of Sondheim in the City concerts at 54 Below on May 7 to 9.

We spoke about Sondheim, the inspiration behind the album, and what Errico is doing to keep each and every concert fresh and unique.

Your new album, Sondheim In The City, focuses on Sondheim's songs about or set in New York City. Where did you get the idea for the theme?

When I finished my first Sondheim album, Sondheim Sublime, in 2019, I knew that I had been visiting only one room – maybe one wing – of the Sondheim house.  It was the …well, the spell-casting room, the music room, the  place where all of those enchanting and mysterious incantations got written: “I Remember,” “Not While I’m Around.” The interior-facing Sondheim. But I knew that there were many other rooms, and one of the most important was the living room with a big window that looked out onto New York streets. The exterior-facing Sondheim.  The man who had spent his whole life, he said, within 20 square blocks of Manhattan.  I wanted a street party instead of a series of soliloquies , and that became this album, “Sondheim In The City”.

What’s wonderful about it is that the expansiveness of the concept – the spirit of the city! -- suggests so many different kinds of concerts.  I can “do” the album as a kind of crazy block party for eight nights at Birdland – and then come and do a really reflective, more story-telling style concert, with nothing but acoustic guitar accompaniment at The Green Room, where I’ll be on March 22 – kind of Sondheim Unplugged or Sondheim in Washington Square. And then I’ll go back home to 54 Below on May 7, 8 and 9, and do the show in my usual dizzy Goddess  manner, singing and speaking with all my energies alight . There are as many sides to the material as there are blocks in New York.

You know what’s funny? I actually visited Sondheim’s house in the course of making this record – it was for sale, and I fantasized buying it – and…there were all those rooms!

As a longtime friend and collaborator of Sondheim's, how did it feel putting this album together in the midst of his relatively recent death?

I don’t pretend that I knew Steve well or deeply – it wasn’t as if I was Bernadette or Mandy or someone, he wrote shows for again and again. But we did work closely together on several of his shows – Sunday, Passion, Do I Hear A Waltz – and we had the most wonderful correspondence, practically 19th century …like the letter writers in Passion, actually, though less erotic. (I mean, not erotic at all.)  He was the most wonderfully opinionated artist, and he wasn’t reluctant to share his opinions – or to revise his opinions, if he thought you made sense. (He wrote once to criticize a piece I wrote in the Times for being too credulous about an actresses’ account of a West Side Story audition, and I wrote back that I thought every artist has a right to their own account of their experience…and he wrote back accepting that, ruefully, and saying that I was being more generous than he was.) When a great artist dies, suddenly the story is finished, done, and we begin to go back through it in a new way.   I’ll continue to rummage through and revise Sondheim for the rest of my life.

Your album has a mix of deep cuts and some of Sondheim's most beloved songs, like "Being Alive." Were you consciously trying to strike a balance there? What was your process like of choosing the songs?
We wanted a mix yes, but honestly what we wanted was  less a mechanical  mix of known and unknown than finding songs that told a kind of evocative story of the “Sondheim woman” – one woman’s imaginary trajectory through New York in Sondheim’s time. (Which is more Annie Hall time than our contemporary time.). So, an obscure song like “Dawn” begins the album because it captures the feeling of newness, of a blank slate – its being obscure was the least important thing about it. It’s a great song! And then when we came to the ‘classics’—“Another Hundred People”, “Being Alive” – we did consciously try to do them in new ways.  “Another Hundred People” has a jazz beat, with an amazing trumpet solo by Bruce Harris, and “Being Alive” I sang not as a young woman trying to get out of the empty dating scene, the way it’s written, but as a mature woman reflecting on our perpetual need to welcome pain in search of growth. The same song, but a new feeling. In different shows, I emphasize different songs: at the Green Room “Take Me To The World” is the entry to Sondheim’s imagination; at 54 Below, it may be “Everybody Says Don’t,” a great nightclub opener.

You just finished a weeklong run at Birdland. How did the shows go?

Demanding! Wonderful! Sexy!  To do that many shows and keep them all alive and make it new each time…  I turned to my musicians and friends  and made it a party as much as a program – Isabelle Georges came over from Paris and we did our “Deux Grands Dames” duets, and we brought in trumpet and horns…Usually, I do a well thought-through show, a caber-essay , as  Adam Gopnik and I call it – Adam sends beautiful sentences  from Winnipeg or Tulsa or whatever other airport he’s stranded in on his book tours --but we decided to make this one a Sondheim birthday party, a kind of block party.  Oh, it was wonderful.  My voice ended stronger than it began.

What's coming up next for you?

More and more Sondheim concerts, all over, some with symphony, a favorite testing regimen.  I’m at the Green Room on March 22 for a kind of ‘unplugged’ , moody acoustic Sondheim show, with lots of literary reading and meditations on his art. And Adam Gopnik and David Shire are working on a new musical for me with a thrilling theme that speaks to my love of medieval mysteries in art, one of my college subjects. And  I’m working on the book that all those pieces in the Times have suggested and shaped – stay tuned for more. And believe it or not, I already have a third and clinching Sondheim album in mind, one last tour of still one more unexplored wing.  Stay tuned for that, too.

Tickets to Melissa Errico’s March 22 Sondheim birthday show at Green Room 42 are available here.

Tickets to Melissa Errico’s May 7-9 run at 54 Below to celebrate the vinyl release of Sondheim In The City are available here.

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