Tony Award-nominated performer Melissa Errico is bringing her talents and the music of the incomparable Stephen Sondheim to top stages in New York and London this summer.
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 01: Melissa Errico performs onstage during Broadway’s Best Comes Together To Salute Chita Rivera At Touch The Sky, A Benefit To Build NY’s First Shane’s Inspiration Inclusive Playground For Kids Of All Abilities at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall on October 1, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Shane’s Inspiration)
Getty Images for Shane’s Inspiration
Tonight and tomorrow night (June 20 and 21) she will sing songs written by Sondheim at 54 Below, the Broadway supper club, while she will perform a “Sondheim in the City” program at Cadogan Hall in London on July 12, her debut in that hall.
54 Below said her shows there would present “a sparkling evening of (Sondheim’s) sublime songs side by side with engaging stories of his craft and life. Errico’s admiration for her friend and teacher — she refers to his wisdom and inspiration as ‘life-saving, sheer joy, giving us all creative courage’ — is always evident. This…engagement is a preview of her upcoming concert hall debut in London.”
Errico, 54 Below continued, “worked with Stephen Sondheim on productions of Sunday in the Park with George, John Doyle’s hit production of Passion, and Do I Hear A Waltz? at City Center. She played the Baker’s Wife in a concert run of Into the Woods. She has sung Sondheim on PBS, ‘Finishing the Hat’ for Poetry in America and on her own filmed solo special. She sang and spoke at a tribute to him in her Carnegie Hall debut in 2022 with the New York Pops. She has made two all-Sondheim albums, with a third on the way.”
The June 21 54 Below performance, which will be livestreamed, will feature Tony Award winner Len Cariou, the Sweeney in the original 1979 Broadway production of Sweeney Todd.
In an interview with Forbes.com this week, Errico said Cariou would tell the story of how Sondheim’s legendary song, “Send in the Clowns” from Sweeney Todd—immortalized by Judy Collins—got written.
Errico’s July 12 performance at Cadogan Hall, “Sondheim in the City,” will feature Olivier Award-winner Julian Ovenden, accompanied by Tedd Firth on piano and a trio from Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Errico will perform classics from Sondheim’s Company, Merrily We Roll Along and Anyone Can Whistle, among other shows, and tell stories about her work with him.
Melissa Errico and Stephen Sondheim
Bruce Glikas
Asked what her favorite Sondheim musical and song are, Errico told Forbes.com this week that this “alters all the time. But I can never get past the beauties of Sunday In the Park and A Little Night Music and their big, ambivalent arias: ‘Children and Art’ — which I got to sing to him on his ninetieth birthday—and, of course, ‘Send In the Clowns,’ which I’ll be singing ‘this week. Those two will always have a place in my heart and on my setlist.”
Asked what the message of Sondheim’s music is for listeners today, she said, “It’s both to accept ambivalence and embrace pluralism. All of our lives, and particularly all of our loves, are always all mixed up – that’s the moral of ‘Sorry, Grateful’ and ‘Good Thing Going’ and ‘Moments In the Woods.’ The course of true love (and marriage) never runs smooth, and we wouldn’t recognize it if it did. But he also tells us to embrace the sheer variety of New York , and in that way of the world. That’s the moral of ‘Sunday’ from Sunday In The Park and ‘Move On’ and ‘Children and Art.’ (I know, they’re set in Paris, but Sondheim’s Paris is another version of New York.) They tell us that we not only have to accept but embrace and celebrate all the complexities of life, and all the many kinds of people in the park – the ones we share the world with.”