Melissa Errico - "Someone to Watch Over Me" Live at Birdland July 3, 2017

“A Magical Evening Of American Standards”
With MELISSA ERRICO
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Step back in time to the moment when New York’s nightclubs dazzled with sophisticated singers, when artists like Bobby Short and Peggy Lee filled the Manhattan night with the classics of the American songbook. Broadway’s most celebrated soprano, Melissa Errico – who the New York Times calls “the voice of enchantment” -- creates extraordinary concerts of American standards with songs ranging from Porter to Gershwin up to Sondheim and Miranda. New York Times writer and Broadway star, Melissa Errico makes Manhattan sing again.


MELISSA ERRICO (bio)
“The Maria Callas of American musical theater,” as Opera News has called her, referencing both her crystalline voice and dramatic, expressive intensity, Melissa Errico is an actress, singer, recording artist and author. Her 2018 album titled Sondheim Sublime (Warner Music/ Ghostlight) was called by The Wall Street Journal “The best all-Sondheim album ever recorded.” Nothing in her work has been more constant, however, than her association with
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 - where she is a frequent contributor- and was then invited to become the sole American performer to participate in two extraordinary memorials in Europe: the two-day tribute to Legrand held in April 2019 at Paris’ Le Grand Rex Theatre, followed by Royal Festival Hall in London, work that led one critic to announce that, “Errico is, and will continue to be, the premier interpreter of the musical legacy of Michel Legrand.”
Warner Music/Ghostlight Records has just reissued her symphonic album, which Legrand arranged & conducted, as “Legrand Affair Deluxe Edition.” The original album featured the 100-piece Brussels Philharmonic and was produced by Phil Ramone. The bonus material includes new songs recorded with a jazz quartet, as well as intimate studio demos made with Legrand at the very beginning of the process.

Melissa was Eliza Doolittle on Broadway in My Fair Lady, and has starred in the Broadway musicals Anna Karenina, High Society, Les Miserables, Dracula, White Christmas and Michel Legrand’s Amour which won her a Tony Award nod for Best Actress In A Musical. With 7 Drama Desk nominations and the winner of the Lucille Lortel Award for her portrayal of Kurt Weill’s Venus, Melissa was honored with a caricature at Sardi’s. This was during the successful run of the off-Broadway revival of “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” in 2018.

Melissa debuted her ravishing Legrand tribute concert titled “Amour & After- Melissa Errico sing Michel Legrand” at a standing room only concert at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel last spring, and is currently touring this concert from coast to coast, as well as returning to London and Paris through the middle of July 2020. She will soon be seen discussing & performing selections from ‘Sunday In The Park With George’ on film on the forthcoming PBS Poetry in America portrait of Sondheim. She was the curator of a popular French film festival at FIAF in NYC last summer, and toured with Michael Feinstein, including at The American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center. Her future plans include concerts devoted to the music of Kurt Weill and the words of Yip Harburg, a new album of swing standards, and an autobiographical novel.