Sondheim In The City, a new album by Tony-nominated actress, singer and author Melissa Errico, is now available to buy, DL, or stream HERE. Errico has also announced a special Sondheim In The City vinyl release celebration concert on May 7-9, 2024 at 54 Below.
“Emotional, authentic, stirring, and gracious with sophisticated interpretations,” is what I called Errico’s romantic, inward-turning Sondheim Sublime (released in 2018). Now, her new 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.
Sondheim In the City is the Sondheim of smart, sophisticated New York, the Sondheim of the quick, witty, sardonic, love-seeking and sex-driven city that he recorded and worked in through his long life. From the anthem of city busyness “Another Hundred People” to the bittersweet hymns of city marriage, “Sorry, Grateful” and “Good Thing Going,” with time for hardboiled surprises like “Uptown, Downtown” and surprisingly soft-centered ballads like “All That I Need” and “Dawn,” Melissa sounds out New York as she rounds out her portrait of Sondheim.
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 celebrates and embodies New York characters of all kinds, with a clear arc of passage along the way. 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. Read more about Melissa’s inspiration HERE.
Watch Melissa perform “What More Do I Need?” in the recording studio HERE.
Melissa Errico (photo by Marco Vacchi)
“I believe that Sondheim is many things – sly, satiric, wise, biting – all that,” said Errico. “But when it comes to his city songs, he is above all ecstatic. This is a rhythmically playful record because of that ecstatic side of him, his poetic view of the city as ecstatic. ‘All that jazz’ is there because no other sound captures this city – his city – so well.”
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. Complete album credits can be found HERE.
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
