Chronicles of a Girl Singer, Part 2: DARK AND LIGHT

Last week, Melissa Errico blogged about her ongoing “Sondheim in The City” tour (culminating in Cadogan Hall, London, July 12, 2025). As here and in the New York Times, Errico writes about the summits and shoals of a performer’s life. Today, she finds herself on the last three days of her tour with a completely different assignment—an evening of film noir music, in the City of Angels itself.

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I’m back. Well, maybe I should rephrase that: I am still not back. I mean, I am “on the road,” singing my way through the post-election.

My Sondheim concerts are over, for now– elated to say they were among the happiest nights of my career. I am in Los Angeles rehearsing, and tonight is opening night in Long Beach. I was here a few months ago, singing Sondheim, and I packed my bags ten days ago, knowing that the final days of my November tour were to be a flashback to my previous album. The Carpenter Center For The Performing Arts in Long Beach has invited me back to sing the music of film noir.

So, I travelled with two suitcases. One for Sondheim, and one for a femme fatale. To be honest, Sondheim always dominates my preparation and his genius is like a clarion trumpet, saving my soul and everyone else’s with his wisdoms and rich ambivalences. Turning my mind – and voice—to my final concerts, I was struck by a more sly influence… the sound of American pessimism.

My noir show is full of classic titles of the 1940s era like “Angel Eyes,” “Haunted Heart,” “Laura,” ‘Bad and The Beautiful” and “Blame it On My Youth,” the latter a song by Oscar Levant who was noir before there was noir. Oscar after all was the man who said “Happiness isn’t something you experience, it’s something you remember.” People never stop writing noir songs and I have modern noir in this show also, like a new melody by Patricia Barber and one by David Shire and Adam Gopnik.

The music I am singing is ripe territory for any singer. Who doesn’t like brooding on ill-fated romance, obsession, sex and thwarted dreams? Think of it as a saloon song cycle unspooling all our indecisions and bad decisions.

Sondheim left me stronger last week, emboldened by ideas of renewal and a determination to recognize blessings like “with so little to be sure of, we had a moment. / A marvelous moment.” And our actions, even if they lead to trouble, are rewarded by Steve for being actions: “the choice may have been mistaken. / the choosing was not.”

I head into tonight in a different state of mind. Noir is a dreamscape that thrums to Randy Waldman’s piano chords… a lonely saxophone (or trumpet, clarinet, or jazz flute) will walk me down dark, sleepless, alleys. Rehearsing the show was something of a dream in itself. I am using what we call, in nightlife terms, a “pick up band” meaning local musicians reading charts for the first time. My west coast pianist is leading the ensemble, and he has been Barbra Streisand’s accompanist since 1984. Being in his home to rehearse, I marvel at the platinum records they share (including her The Broadway Album) and her hand-written notes. True Hollywood!

Tonight, I will do my best to embody old-style Hollywood glamour in a shimmering black dress made by Broadway legend Eric Winterling. I’ll take a look at my own dreams, and give some consideration to how film noir began at all. It was World War 2, the darkest time, or one of, in human history. Noir is a form of American film making of the 1940s first identified by French film critic Nino Frank, if a 1946 edition of the magazine “L’Ecran Francais” writing about “Laura,” “Double Indemnity” and “The Maltese Falcon.” Noir was made by émigré German-American filmmakers under the influence of German-Expressionist cinema and involved a sensibility of mystery where desire, and death and doom, meet and entangle over and over.

Is this an American music or a European music? The essence is that noir is a movement of emotion that sweeps from Europe to America. And then from America to Europe. The Americans make the movies but the Europeans see the importance.

I’ll be singing in the shadows, but looking for light. The concert itself is a labyrinth of light and dark. This femme, somewhat fatale, is looking for the what the point is of anything right now.

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Melissa plays November 13-14 at 7 pm at the Carpenter Center For The Performing Arts in California. Tickets are available on their website.

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