Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico—hailed by Billboard as “the premiere Sondheim interpreter” and The New Yorker as “the finest interpreter of Sondheim working in America today”— makes her Regatta debut with Sondheim in the City, a jazz-inflected evening devoted to rhythm, harmony, the songcraft, and the city, of Stephen Sondheim.
Errico treats his work as modern American song—swinging, intimate, and elastic— bringing fresh jazz treatments to well-loved titles like What More Do I Need?, Good Thing Going, and Send In the Clowns, alongside rarities and early gems such as Dawn and Nice Town, But…. while covering nearly every Sondheim musical, including Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Company, Sunday In The Park, Passion and Sweeney Todd.
Errico’s relationship to this music is singular. She has starred in four of Sondheim’s musicals, recorded two acclaimed albums devoted to his work (with The Wall Street Journal calling the first “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded”), and shared a personal artistic bond with the composer himself, who once said she had the sensibilities of “both an actress and a big band singer.”
Accompanied by a jazz ensemble led by pianist Tedd Firth, Errico brings suppleness, swing and conversational phrasing, and has been called “a cross between Julie Andrews and Julie London” As Gramophone Magazine noted, “She makes you feel these have always been jazz standards rather than Broadway numbers.” Add her deep, emotional attachment to the music and this is “a rare chance to hear a true Broadway superstar at the peak of her powers” (London Theatre Weekly). Her recent London concert hall debut, accompanied by the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz quartet playing two acts of Sondheim, was praised as “the performance of her life”; “magical” (CNN), “gorgeous!” (Newsweek), “astonishing” (Shenton Stage), and “dazzling, sung with warmth, insight, and grace” (BroadwayWorld).