Melissa Errico Will Release New Solo Album, Sondheim In The City

Concord Theatricals Recordings has just announced the forthcoming release of Sondheim In The City, a new album by Tony Award®-nominated actress, singer and author Melissa Errico. The album will release on CD, streaming and digital platforms on February 16, 2024.

Preorder the CD HERE.

In addition to the album, Errico will offer a 10-performance residency at Birdland Jazz on February 14-18, titled “A Manhattan Valentine.” February 16 and 17 shows will celebrate the album release, while February 14, 15 and 18 shows will feature songs by Sondheim, alongside classics by Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart and Billy Joel.

“The finest all-Sondheim album ever recorded,” was The Wall Street Journal’s verdict on Errico’s ecstatic, inward-turning Sondheim Sublime (released in 2018). Now, her 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’s silky and sensuous voice wraps itself around New York characters of all kinds. 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.

“Sondheim is my New York, and his is the city of my dreams,” said Errico. “I used all these songs to make a Sondheim musical for myself – partly my life, partly his mind. He is one of the enduring poets of this complex city, and I walked into one poem after another.”

“I had the privilege of working with Steve Sondheim for many years. Melissa’s new album is a beautiful and innovative yet respectful take on some of his best songs,” said Sean Patrick Flahaven, Chief Theatricals Executive for Concord.

Sondheim In The City is produced by Rob Mathes (Sting, Elvis Costello) and features a variety of notable musicians, including arranger Tedd Firth on piano, David Finck on bass, Lewis Nash on drums and Matt Munisteri on guitar. The album was recorded, edited and mixed by Alex Venguer and mastered by Scott Hull.

Album Track List:

1. Dawn
2. Another Hundred People
3. Opening Doors / What More Do I Need?
4. Take Me To The World
5. Can That Boy Foxtrot!
6. Anyone Can Whistle
7. Everybody Says Don’t
8. Good Thing Going
9. Broadway Baby
10. Uptown, Downtown
11. It Wasn’t Meant To Happen
12. Little Things You Do Together
13. Sorry-Grateful
14. Being Alive

Recent albums released by Concord Theatricals Recordings include the GRAMMY Award®-winning Into The Woods, starring Sara Bareilles and the GRAMMY®-nominated currently-running, Tony Award-winning hit, Some Like It Hot (Original Broadway Cast Recording) by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman as well as the GRAMMY®-nominated Mr. Saturday Night, starring Billy Crystal; Jaime Lozano & The Familia’s Songs By An Immigrant Vol. 2; Carmel Dean’s Well-Behaved Women (Studio Cast Recording); Shaina Taub’s As You Like It (Original Public Works Cast Recording) and Antonio Banderas and Teatro del Soho CaixaBank’s Spanish-language cast albums of Godspell, Company and A Chorus Line. Additional recordings include the GRAMMY®-nominated cast albums of Come From Away, Amélie (Original London Cast Recording) and the 2018 revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, in addition to 17 Again, featuring Casey Likes and Eden Espinosa; The Big Time, starring Santino Fontana and Debbie Gravitte; The Visitor, starring David Hyde Pierce; DRAG: The Musical (The Studio Recording); and Jason Robert Brown’s Coming From Inside The House, featuring Ariana Grande and Shoshana Bean.

BIOGRAPHIES

Melissa Errico is a Tony Award-nominated Broadway star -- an actress, singer and author who contributes regularly to The New York Times. In summer 2023, she sang a concert in Paris which was broadcast internationally nationally on Radio France, followed by a sold-out cabaret at the historic Le Bal Blomet. Also last summer, she opened for music icon George Benson at the Montreal Jazz Festival and will continue to tour with his band in 2024. Though a constant in the New York theater, she has become equally known for her music and concert work worldwide. Her 2018 album, Sondheim Sublime, called by The Wall Street Journal “The best all-Sondheim album ever recorded,” led to sold-out concerts dates from Ravinia to Caramoor and Wolftrap -- San Francisco to Singapore to London, and including the 92 St Y, Joe’s Pub, Town Hall, and Lincoln Center’s Allen Room. Errico’s history with Sondheim began when he selected her to star as Dot 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?  In 2020, she sang “Children and Art” in the Sondheim 90th Birthday Concert “Take Me To The World,” and was featured on PBS television in a documentary special in which she sang “Finishing The Hat” and joined Adam Gopnik and Raul Esparza on Poetry in America. She was also featured in The New York Times tribute to Sondheim in Nov, 2021 as a top ten interpreter of his work and in Nov, 2022 she made her Carnegie Hall debut in the concert Broadway Blockbusters with The New York Pops, where her performance included three Sondheim numbers including  “Losing My Mind,” and “Move On.”  In addition to Sondheim, nothing in her work has been more constant than her association with composer Michel Legrand. Having starred in his sole Broadway show, Amour, she went on to collaborate with him on the iconic album Legrand Affair. After his death in 2019, she was asked to write his eulogy by The New York Times and was then invited to be the sole American performer in the extraordinary two-day memorial to Legrand held in April, 2019 at Paris’ Le Grand Rex Theatre.

Concord Theatricals is the world’s most significant theatrical company, comprising the catalogs of R&H Theatricals, Samuel French, Tams-Witmark and The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, plus dozens of new signings each year. Our unparalleled roster includes the work of Irving Berlin, Agatha Christie, George & Ira Gershwin, Marvin Hamlisch, Lorraine Hansberry, Kander & Ebb, Kitt & Yorkey, Ken Ludwig, Marlow & Moss, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anaïs Mitchell, Dominique Morisseau, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Thornton Wilder and August Wilson. We are the only firm providing truly comprehensive services to the creators and producers of plays and musicals, including theatrical licensing, music publishing, script publishing, cast recording and first-class producing. www.concordtheatricals.com

Concord is the independent, worldwide leader in the development, management and acquisition of sound recordings, music publishing, theatrical performance rights and narrative content. Headquartered in Nashville with offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Berlin and Miami, Concord also has staff in Toronto, Tokyo and Melbourne. The Company’s catalog consists of nearly 900,000 songs, composed works, plays, musicals and active recordings which are licensed in virtually every country and territory worldwide. 

Photo Credit: Concord Theatricals Recordings