BWW Exclusive: Melissa Errico Sings 'The Way He Makes Me Feel' From LEGRAND AFFAIR (DELUXE EDITION)

Ghostlight Records will release Legrand Affair (Deluxe Edition) from Tony Award-nominated singer, actress and writer Melissa Errico on Friday, November 8. The track "The Way He Makes Me Feel" will be available to customers who pre-order the album starting on Friday, October 25.

Get an exclusive first listen, along with a look at the video for the song, below!

One of Michel Legrand's final full-scale works was the score, written with lyrics by the Bergmans, for Barbra Streisand's adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's great tale of a yeshiva girl, Yentl. "I had always shied away a little from that repertoire, because I thought it so belonged to Barbra, whom I adore," Melissa Errico says, "But I found myself singing this song in concerts, and it seemed to work so well that I couldn't resist recording it."

Gently riding on Legrand's quietly Eastern European cadences, Melissa finds a way into the song that counterpoints Streisand's more florid take: precise, exquisite, and less declarative than confessional. "I hear this song as an admission the girl is making to herself, more than an announcement she's making to the guy she's singing about," Errico says. The second single from Warner Music/Ghostlight Records soon-to-be released "Legrand Affair: Deluxe Edition", it features Tedd Firth on piano.

The extended and complete version of the album Legrand Affair, originally produced by Phil Ramone and Richard Jay-Alexander, features Errico with the 100-piece Brussels Philharmonic. The highlight of this special release is the last song Legrand wrote before passing away earlier this year, "I Haven't Thought Of This In Quite A While." It written with his favorite lyricists Alan & Marilyn Bergman, and never performed or heard by anyone until now. The song is both a tribute to their long marriage, and an instinctive retrospective of Legrand's song-making styles - a final farewell from one of music's greatest songwriting teams, a last look back thematically, lyrically, and musically. "This song is a haunted house," Errico said as she recorded it. This Deluxe Edition will also include 11 other new and previously unreleased tracks, including intimate studio demos with Legrand on piano. Produced by Rob Mathes (Sting, Carly Simon, Rod Stewart), Legrand Affair (Deluxe Edition) is now available for pre-order at www.ghostlightrecords.com/melissa-errico-legrand-affair-deluxe.html

Errico will celebrate the album release with concerts from November 7 to 9 at 7:00 PM at Feinstein's/54 Below. Tickets are $45-$95 and are available at www.54Below.com.

"The Maria Callas of American musical theater" as Opera News recently called her, referencing her crystalline voice and dramatic, expressive intensity, Errico has starred in seven Broadway shows, earning a Best Actress Tony nomination for Legrand's only Broadway musical Amour. Her last album Sondheim Sublime was called "the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded" by The Wall Street Journal.

When the great Oscar and Grammy Award-winning French composer Michel Legrand died in January of 2019, Melissa Errico was asked by The New York Times to offer the eulogy to her beloved collaborator, and became the sole American to perform at the extraordinary two-day memorial to Legrand in April at Paris' Le Grand Rex Theatre, causing one reviewer to announce simply that "Errico is, and will continue to be, the premier interpreter of the musical legacy of Michel Legrand." Then, while searching through her Legrand memorabilia, she discovered a long-overlooked box of beautifully recorded demos she had made of Legrand songs, with Legrand himself on the piano, bassist David Finck and the great pop drummer Steve Gadd - all exquisite sketches for the album that became "Legrand Affair". These demos include a series of living room recordings made with Michel at the piano at Melissa's home, revealing his almost mystical gift for passing instantly from genre to genre, from classical to pop to French chanson to free jazz.

"Working with Michel was one of the highlights of my musical life" says Errico. "It's as though this year, his spirit is at my shoulder and asking me to sing again for him. I love the grandeur of the "Legrand Affair" album beyond words -- but hearing the tracks of me and Michel working together reminded me of how much I also love hearing more intimate versions of his music. In Michel's music, genre doesn't exist - he was unencumbered by boundaries. His plurality of disciplines became his freedom and made one seamless web of music. I'm happy beyond words to be able to put his energy back into the world."