A Conversation with Melissa Errico

"Variety is the spice of Sondheim." We speak to Melissa Errico about her new disc, Sondheim In The City

“One of Sondheim’s deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters.” That’s how The New York Times describes Melissa Errico, in its glowing review of her new album, Sondheim In The City. The Wall Street Journal described her 2018 disc, Sondheim Sublime, as “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded.” Errico’s history with Sondheim began when he selected her to star as Dot/Marie in Sunday In The Park With George at The Kennedy Center, then as Clara in Passion at Classic Stage Company; then in the NY City Center Encores! production of Do I Hear A Waltz? As well as being a Broadway star, she is a renowned concert artist, touring the world with her own imitable thematic performances. Our conversation begins below:

Sondheim In The City is such a beautifully crafted disc. Even before consciously putting together a record like this, have you always found joy in finding thematic links between songs and numbers you originally heard in all sorts of different contexts? I’m reminded of George’s desire “to see a connection” in Act II of Sunday… 

I studied art history in college, and part of the joy of that is learning to see things a little bit horizontally – this picture by Seurat relates to this other one over here by Degas which relates to this one by Monet... So, yes, I’ve always loved finding connections between unexpected units. It’s one of the ways in which the art of the cabaret-concert has matured. Instead of just singing a set list – “For my next song, here’s a song I sang in 2004…” – I try (and I notice a lot of other performers also trying) to find exactly those thematic links. On the theme of changing New York, or our exit from the pandemic. Even simple things like connecting the “Who Wants To Live In New York” theme from Merrily We Roll Along to “What More Do I Need.” Like a question – and an answer!

Speaking of connections, listening to your disc sparked some new ones for me: I had never heard traces of “It Takes Two” in “Take Me To The World” before. I’m thinking of the passage beginning “A world that smiles…” in the former, and the “If you could see / You’re not the man who started…” section of the latter. Even with such a deep familiarity with Sondheim’s body of work, do you still find yourself surprised and delighted by newfound correspondences between certain moments in certain songs? 

Yes! I always am. As I say, I love leaning one song into another. On my first Sondheim album, “Sondheim Sublime,” I used “Not A Day Goes By” as a kind of self-discovered verse to “Marry Me a Little.” But I’m also constantly discovering new relations among the songs in his body of work. I’m fascinated right now, for instance, by the way that “It Wasn’t Meant To Happen” precedes and anticipates “Send In The Clowns,” both musically and lyrically.  I could almost sing one within the other. Those are the kind of constant new relations you discover when you lose yourself in his work. There’s always something new.

I’d love to learn a little more about your collaborative process when it comes to the new arrangements on this disc. Are they born out of something specific or new that you want to say with a particular song, or is it more about the variety and flow of the disc as a whole? 

I work within the song, and though I want a beautiful variety and play of different kinds of music on the album, I don’t want to sacrifice any song to an imaginary listener’s impatience.  For this record, I wanted a kind of kaleidoscope of sounds, a city party – so some of the arrangements, beautifully done by Tedd Firth and Rob Mathes, are almost folky in their guitar strumming underpinnings, like “Good Thing Going” – while others, like “Uptown, Downtown,” are almost klezmerish in their up and down, balls out jazz rhythm. Variety is the spice of Sondheim.

In your liner notes, you write beautifully about place—both as you describe your experience of Sondheim’s home, and as you write about the city as a whole. I wondered how you think about place when it comes to performing, and in particular performing Sondheim. Are there specific technical things you adjust depending on the size, grandeur, or formality of the room? How much does a particular space influence your programming? 

There’s a lovely phrase that engineers use when they’re recording anything live, even just an interview: “Room Tone.”  You always have to be quiet for forty-five seconds so they can record ‘room tone’ to fly into the interview when they edit it. It’s profoundly true: each room has its own tone, its own vibe, its own warmth – or absence of it. In my two favorite nightclubs in New York – the two best nightclubs in New York; 54 Below and Birdland – even if I’m singing the same program, I take a slightly different approach. Birdland is a great jazz room and somehow the sounds of the jazz have been absorbed into the walls – I’m always a bit more direct, sassier, more the girl jazz singer, in the legacy of Jo Stafford or Nancy Wilson, when I’m there, with a little bit more back phrasing and flirting with the band. I like to let them stretch out. Plus with our annual Valentine’s residency, we feel so relaxed and welcome. 54 is a Broadway room, with a Broadway feeling… I’m more the leading lady there, usually in a gown (I donned a top hat last week!) and singing the songs from a slightly more stage point of view – and with the band sitting down, sort of like a pit orchestra. Also, that room wraps around so I need to be sure everyone can see me.

I could go on: about how Myron’s in Vegas makes me a little more Streisand (the grand high ceilings? The chic deco lighting?) and the Crazy Coqs room in London has me more inclined to talk to the guests (it’s a cuddle there)… but the point is, yes, it’s a constant dialogue between the singer and the room she sings in. Le Bal Blomet in Paris sends things a little wild, raw, emotional, like you want to deliver every American passion. And I’ve been known to tap dance there in their Parisian musical hall aura. 

I’d love to ask about your time as Dot/Marie in Sunday and Clara in Passion. When approaching roles such as those—or indeed Eliza Doolittle—which many theatergoers might have a certain image of in their heads because of previous productions and performers, how do you go about making these characters your own?

It’s a process. I try to read everything that might affect the character’s make up – when I was playing Clara in Passion I even read the (very long) Rousseau epistolary novel that’s part of the story’s background. With Eliza I read as much of Shaw as I could carry in my roller bag (don’t know if I had a roller bag in those days, but you get the point). Of course, you want your take on the character to be new – I wanted my Dot not to be Bernadette’s Dot, even though I was wearing her costumes! – but that’s an organic process that just works its way out, in dialogue with the director through rehearsal. With Clara, I had three kids at home (ages 3, 3 and 5), so I felt the weight of her choices threefold. With Dot, I found a lot of my Dot by seeing who Marie became (I imagined her educated & refined & soulful & stable). Dot’s impulsive life, her life of instinct and vulnerability, lived clearly for me through her daughter. 

Has your time spent working on Sondheim In The City made you intrigued about taking on a particular Sondheim role that you haven’t performed on stage before?

It’s bad luck for an actress to state too loudly the parts she wants to play. So just let it be said that as a mature actress retrospecting her life and her lost loves and her relationship with her children, and inclined to think again about just how glamorous the glamorous life is… well, let’s just say I’d …desire to explore a role like that. 

What advice would you give to a young performer embarking on their own journey with Sondheim’s work—perhaps just beginning to see connections of their own?

Hmmm. To be reverent but not too reverent – he always said in his letters to me that if you first covered the original musical idea, you should then feel free to be a ‘girl singer,’ by which he meant a jazz warbler, taking a few liberties. Or, on another plane, though he didn’t necessarily think that doing a woman’s version of “Finishing The Hat” was a good idea – it was written for a man, Seurat, for a particular moment in his life – it still is a good idea. New things are revealed. Above all, pay attention to the meanings – to the stance and predicament of the particular character you’re portraying in the song, even if that character (as in “Hat”) isn’t necessarily the original character from the show. And allow ambivalences to amplify!  You can’t explore too many mixed emotions in expressing the essence of Steve.

Find out more about Melissa’s upcoming shows and activities by clicking here.

Find out more about Sondheim In The City by clicking here, where it is available to order too. At this same link, you can read Melissa’s liner notes for the album in full. These liner notes contain some of the most beautiful writing on Sondheim that I have ever read. I would thoroughly recommend treating yourself not only to Melissa’s disc, but to her words as well!