Melissa Errico’s Sondheim Sublime

After starring in Broadway shows such as Anna Karenina, My Fair Lady, and High Society, the actress-singer Melissa Errico is on a new path. You can read several of her essays in the New York Times, including this remembrance of composer Michel Legrand.

She came to WNYC a few years ago with the revival of Passion, and now she's back with her just-released Sondheim Sublime, an album of all Stephen Sondheim songs, accompanied by pianist Tedd Firth and his trio.

Errico recently sat down with host Paul Cavalconte to talk about her personal story, the process of making the album, what drew her to Sondheim, her special bond with his music, and which song she sings to her children (hint: it's from Sweeney Todd!).

You can see Melissa Errico in a show dedicated entirely to Sondheim as part of Lyrics and Lyricists at the 92nd Street Y. For more details about the show visit: Sondheim: Wordplay. Her new album Sondheim Sublime is available through Ghostlight Deluxe.

Hear Sondheim Sublime and more at wnyc.org/songbook

The following transcript has been edited.

Paul Cavalconte: Paul Cavalconte here with Melissa Errico. Welcome.

Melissa Errico: Hi. 

Paul: "Sondheim's Sublime" is as advertised: zeroing in on that sublime word. This is a word that doesn't get bandied about in conversation very much because it's kind of a superlative. So, when we think Sondheim, we think about the outer-limits, as someone who takes us to places that nobody else goes to. Before Sondheim, it seemed like songs in shows were kind of ornamental and there are moments that either anchor the show or move the storyline forward. But with Sondheim, something different is going on because the narrative is so in the songs and the songs are so dense. And that presents a real challenge to somebody who aspires to make a Sondheim record of 'a little bit of this and a little bit of that'.

Melissa: Yeah. Oh you've said so many interesting things. You're quite right. I'll tell you how this all came about. I first became an actress by watching great people like Angela Lansbury and Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin. These are the people I most admire and a lot of the Sondheim stuff came into my psyche as like the pinnacle of what I would love to do someday. And then I have gone on to work with Sondheim and do three musicals: "Sunday In The Park With George", "Passion", and "Do I Hear a Waltz". Those in my long career have been the greatest and most intense experiences. So I saw his work, I saw his work in its context and saw the incredible way in which all he does is write for character and for the plot. He's not the kind of guy who you give him five chords and five nice words and say, "throw it together give me a song".

However, I witnessed even being an actor that something does leave the play and lasts forever. Something stayed with me and I have three children that are 10, 10, and 12 now. And in 2017, I faced a life experience that was super challenging. I had a cyst and then I had a tumor in my body which turned out to be not cancer but it was a neuroendocrinal tumor. Turns out, I'm absolutely fine. So to put you out of your suspense, I'm OK. But for a time, there was a hunt to understand what this was and it was terrifying. And I faced the idea of my own mortality. I thought of my children and I thought to myself 'what in my whole life was I ever taught that I can hang onto?' And I thought of Sondheim. And I thought of the times where the songs seemed that they could last foreve and they had all the wisdom and beauty and hope and sublimity really in them that I went looking for some answers for myself. And I was asked to do a concert and I thought 'I'll do Sondheim'. So this album came out of one concert at that time in my life with that intention to extract from Sondheim those universal things. And as I put the songs together, I thought of that word 'sublime'. I was an art history major at Yale and there is a period in art history called "the sublime". And the sublime is the idea of beautiful things that are also terrifying. They're all the pictures of shipwrecks and storms and mountain tops and nature at its most beautiful but its most terrifying. And I thought 'well that's everything about Sondheim that's so beautiful, but it addresses fearlessly the hardest heartbreaks'.

Paul: It sure does. You've really nailed him with the description of that period in art and also with the idea that it seems like the Sondheim wheelhouse is as simple, could be as simple as 'I'm okay. I'm not okay. How do I get okay'.

Melissa: Right.

Paul: That's kind of like the wheelhouse.

Melissa : We die, but we don't. What do we leave behind when we depart this world?

You know, that's how I was like. I'm so alive. I'm so happy. I'm so scared. I love my daughters. What do I want to leave behind? I'm an actress, but I'm just a human being. I wanted to capture if I could and write a letter and in a way from my heart. Mostly to my daughters. And that's where this came from.  If my heart learned anything on this earth, Sondheim is for me The Great Druid to turn to. So that's what I did with this.

Paul: So how about the man himself. What is your relationship to him either before or after "Sondheim Sublime", Melissa Errico?

Melissa: I'm trying to think what broke the ice. I think it was a conversation I had on the telephone with Tony Walton who is a icon in our business, a set and costume designer. I said so many admiring things about Sondheim and how I wanted to do this concert because he gives me every sense of purpose in my life. And Tony said you can have to tell Steve this. I said, "oh I could never". And he said, "you have to". And so he gave me his email, years ago. And I got a letter right back that said, "you make me blush". And I was like 'I made Sondheim blush'. And I sent him the concert video and he was very taken with it. He liked it and he sent me notes. He sent me two pages of notes.

Paul: Wow!

Melissa: Analyzing song by song by song. And he loves Ted Firth, the piano player. Then there was a lot of back and forth as I did other concerts and then started to conceive the record.

Paul: That's great.  I love that Sondheim is saying to you, "You take me seriously. I take you seriously". And that he would become an instructor or an educator to you is a very generous thing.

Melissa: So generous.

Paul: There's nothing pedantic about that.

Melissa: And he recommended songs and he threw me the song from Roadshow (that's on my album). And he also gave me some other songs to break things up. He told me stories about singers who took ballads and made them up-tempos. And he knows what he calls the 'band singer', the girl singer. He knows that world. That there is another set of rules in a nightclub. So he actually allows for some reinterpretation and some like you were saying "living outside of the story" like I sing "I Remember" from Evening Primrose.

And I do it completely with a groovy tempo. And he just gave me thoughts about that, for example, that he didn't think that it needed to be relived. He said, "It's a memory, but I don't need you to relive all the emotions". In other words he wanted me to have a kind of distance from the emotional impact of all your youth rushing back to you in that song.

Paul: I just want to point out, you know, the simple fact that there are songs (and again they're included on Melissa Eriko's "Sondheim Sublime") that are as common now and as universal as "Send in the Clowns", "Children Will Listen, Marry Me a Little, you know, is in that category.

Melissa: Losing my Mind, maybe.

Paul: Yes, Losing my Mind. But these are hits!

Melissa: Yes.

Paul: Sure he can write a hit song. Sure he could come up with words for Maria, you know, or Officer Krupke. We forget that he's been part of other very, you know, commercial things. But relate him to the Cole Porter's and the Irving Berlin's because there's something different going on there.

Melissa: It's true. There is something different going on there and I guess (I think) it's the role of ambivalence. Marry me.... A little.

There's this, always this qualification where you become a little rueful or unsure about what you just said or in the middle of saying. I don't think you feel that so much in Cole Porter or the old songs. They usually are very clear expressions of of of an emotion.

Paul: In linear. They always point that way.

Melissa: No and he points the two directions simultaneously.

In fact you have to be unbelievably, you know, dexterous you have to just literally walk in two directions at the same time. You have to feel sorry and grateful simultaneously. So I think that's where he's unique. So that it makes for an amazing experience for an actor and for someone who's you know sensitive. You know who's sensitive to the fact that every time we say one thing we're feeling and we're reflecting on what we're saying and what we're feeling. He's you see it in his face, every time he's expressing an emotion he's reflecting on it.

Paul: We talked about you know the meaning of the songs and the words now musically they go to similarly ambitious, counter-intuitive: key me in a little bit about that.

Melissa: Well I find that sexy, actually. I find complexity and intellectual things sexy. So I sort of smooth those over because they don't really it doesn't hang me up too much to meet a tricky melody. His melodies are a little more demanding than something. You know, "Loving You" could even be simpler than it is for it to be a easy hit. But Sondheim understands he has to make everything a little tricky because the people he's interested in are tricky. I think the more you listen to it there's no nothing better.

Paul: Melissa Ericco has made Sondheim, sublime but he was already sublime. That's what drew you to him.

But I think there's another thing that drew you to him and that's the fact that you know you and I are of a generation (many people listening to this right now will understand what we're about to address) and that is the fact that this whole "Tin Pan Alley" American musical theater, American Songbook and then the very beginnings of rock and roll in the '50s and then all of a sudden comes Bob Dylan who is like the abstract, expressionist painter who splatters all over the canvas and all of a sudden songs that used to be very linear are going in all these conflicting directions out of that come people like Joni Mitchell you know who does something similar. And I mentioned them because they're not part of the American Songbook American musical theater "Tin Pan Alley" body of songwriting, but they run parallel to it. And this is a fork in the road. And Sondheim emerges at the same time that rock and Bob Dylan start to grow,but nobody else does this in the theater.

Melissa: You know it's still that Sondheim rights for the theater. Even though he is (yeah you're right) he is a contemporary of those great artists and those that that pop movement and things fragmenting like that but he's still a writer for the theater and I'm a theatre person as well as I love art songs and I love I I love pop music but I am an actress and this is well that's what Sondheim cares about: actors.

Paul: Let's use that now as a guide to what draws you into pop songs when you choose to do them. You've gone to songs by Joni  and songs by Billy Joel that's so so let's pick the locks of some of those.

Melissa: Absolutely.

So how do I approach a pop song you mean?

Paul: Or what what would be some of the some of the short list things that would get it eligible for part of your repertoire.

Melissa: Oh well it has to make sense and has to hold my interest. A pop song like like "Secret of Life", I'll say for example: it's advice, it's really good advice with beautiful images. I think it can bloom. I would treat it like an actress in a speech. So I would be coaxing the person and the more I go from verse to verse, I would imagine the person I'm listening to getting more convinced and the band than what hit would kick in more we'd be having a ball by the time we got to [singing] "Isn't it a lovely ride, I'll be sliding down, I'll be glad and down" and we would be having the best time and I would imagine that both the audience and the listener (in my monologue sort of actress world) agreeing with me at that point and we're both going to relax, you know. So by the very end: [singing], "Try not to try too hard, it's just a lovely ride, the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time." I would think by the end, by the time I got there, and the drummers is playing all this shimmer and stuff: we're all in. So that's how I would approach the song. I would take a pop song that literally is three versus that repeat A B A  all this kind of structure, pop structure, which could really, in general, bore me to tears: but I'd find a way through. Did I answer your question?

Paul: Yeah yeah. That and some.

Melissa: Oh yeah yeah I would shape it. I would shape it so we had an experience, we played a scene.

Paul: Yeah it has to become a Melissa Errico song now. Melissa Errico: Sondheim Sublime. It's a good record. Seek it out. Sondheim writes for women in musicals, very differently than maybe anybody else does. You've played some very old- school female leads. Let's talk about how he packages the woman, femininity: how a woman finds her way in the modern world, in these very, very modern songs. 

Melissa: I wrote an article this this past summer about misogyny in the mid-century musical in the New York Times.

Paul: It was great... Very very cool article.

Melissa:Thank you. It kind of was trying to make, so you know, give some window into how a maybe a modern or a feminist actor how you deal with those old scripts and how you wade through all the misogyny and the and the ways where the writers aren't really helping a woman be much more than a puppet. So Sondheim's characters for women: they have an opportunity to be like if you're looking at Dot, for example, in "Sunday in the Park with George".

He wrote an amazing character to play the muse of a great painter, but it would be so easy for us to not hear anything about her life experience. But right away he jumps right into her mind and you feel that sweat dripping down her back; how difficult it is to be a model and how desperate she is to get out of the stillness... Of...she's such a fidgety person, she doesn't want to stand still for a painter and she's fidgety and sexy and Sondheim finds it his way right into her psychology. So right away, the model who could be just another pretty thing to look at is given the most wonderful interiority. So I think Sondheim is so respectful of people.

Melissa: I think he's a great example of the kind of cosmopolitanism, I think that's gonna save the world at the moment. Just an interest in all people and what they have to say. I think from the beginning, even if he's not a political writer per-say, he is so respectful of all people of all types of people.

Paul: You got to think that a lot of that is drawn from the fact that Oscar Hammerstein was a mentor and Oscar was kind of like the instructor. You know you've got to be carefully taught. And there were other songs that were like that guided us with a moral vision. And then there were you know let's not forget that some of Hammerstein's most inspirational words in a Sondheimian in kind of a way but expressed very plainly in almost a hymn-like form are for the song "You'll Never Walk Alone", you know and there's a lot of Sondheim that has that as the moral lesson. But when we move on to Steven and you know what's passed down to Steven, is more of songs about humanity, power, frailty, suffering.

Melissa: Darkness.. Yeah the darkness.

I mean those, the generation before was almost drawn to the sun and to the light: a lot of this, " oh what a beautiful morning". Whereas now if he said "Oh what a beautiful morning". it's probably going to be a really awful day.

Paul: It's interesting to think that those words, and we've referenced now you know "Oklahoma" and "Carousel", which are this incredible turning point, but that we must not forget that their wartime musicals you know. So these reach and they reach for the light at the darkest time in all of humankind. And yet many years later it's sort of like there's an aftershock and Stephen gets the aftershock and that's where the darkness comes in.

Melissa: He looks for the shadows in all of us.

Paul: Rodgers and Hammerstein were not about being dark.. So..

Melissa: No this is the shadowed side. This is the shadows of life really.

Paul: Do you think that this is going to point to other Sondheim things? Do you see an ongoing relationship with, you know, a project like "Sondheim Sublime" or do you see it as more of, you know, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of mo.. You know this is your moment, have it.

Melissa: I don't know that "Sondheim Sublime", but I think that I will be singing Sondheim probably for the rest of my life. I actually don't think it will be "Sondheim Sublime" I'll bring back...So for my live shows I will bring back a lot of the things that, you know, both the songs he wrote with other people things like,  "Gypsy" and maybe something from "West Side Story" definitely "Do I Hear a Waltz." And all the funny songs, you know the stuff from "Company" that I don't do like, "Not Getting Married Today" I don't sing that on this record because this record really was a.. It had its own sort of cosmic-aim, you know, and I think I'll dip into this "sublime" thing for all my concerts. But my future as a concert singer, as I'm a singing actress, you know, I think I'll be singing Sondheim forever I actually think this does queue, actually the future. I want to do it, I want to keep his music alive; I have felt him. I have, I can make that connection and keep it important and keep it and keep it...

Paul: I mean let's not lose sight of the fact that this is collaborative because he did give you, you know, his feedback and his instruction and that may be the last opportunity. You know, unless you dive right into another Sondheim project. I think that's where I'm going with this.

Melissa: It's all I ever really, I mean I really want to keep working on his music. You know, I made it in two nights. So part of me, you know, wants just to keep doing it more so yeah anyway I do think of a lot of Sondheim concerts in my future.

Paul: Like, I like the idea of going to the ones where he wrote the words to somebody else's music because we go to a "Gypsy" or a "West Side Story" and we extract the deepest song and say: let's not forget this is Steven talking here.

Melissa: Something's coming, for example. What a song. Great song.

Paul: There's an example of really strange stuff that has these very straight-ahead songs to anchor it, and you know Steven was sort of like strange on strange on strange on strange.

A lot of a lot of investment.

Well we're not we're not we're not beating up on him or anything but that's why I brought up Bob Dylan before, because he takes you down a lot of blind alleys purposely as well, or he makes things you know very complex. But that's what's special about it: he's asking you to, you know, just sort of get outside of the mold. It breaks a fifth wall in a way.

Melissa: I agree, I agree.

I mean: yes a Sondheim song has an alchemy all all its own. I don't think he ever really knew how to write things just to please people. If you ask him or even look at interviews, all he ever says is: he can't write a song until he's given a circumstance. In a weird way he's so selfless. He just wants to write for the story. He's obsessed with that. I don't think Sondheim was splashing his emotions all over the place. I think he really felt like he was in the old school like a craftsman servicing a story. I don't think he had that kind of ego.

Paul:There is more ourselves than himself. Like he kind of draws us in and makes us be empathic as part of like the rules of the road. You can't get in without the empathy key.

Melissa: Empathy is a big thing. As much as all of that is true, you can still sense that wound that he always talks about; that wound or that bad feeling that he had from his own mother. The comment that she made you know that the one regret in her life was giving birth to him. He said that many times and he's shared that information, it was in that Broadway show about his life. And I think that you can hear that wound in all of his in his writing, though he is writing emphatically for other people.

Paul: I would love to be able to coax him to curate, you know, if you could: let's do karaoke night with Stephen Sondheim. Stephen: you got "Piano Man, "Leaving On A Jet Plane" come what do you think of those? You know, could you imagine Steven, because the enormity of him is so.. and the depth of him. But just say let let's talk about other people's songs. Could you, could you point to, you know, give me a baker's dozen that you would take along for a long weekend to just listen to.

Melissa: I wonder. I think he always says it's classical music.

Paul: Not that one Irving Berlin tune or that one Cole Porter...

Melissa: Well he wrote, there is that list out there.

Paul: Oh he has it got.

Melissa: There is a song.. there's a list out there. You can google: songs I wished I had written. I think it's published, I think it's at the Smithsonian museum, I think the actual piece of paper. The Trolley Song is on there.

Paul: Is it really? Can you remember some of the others?

Melissa: No... songs I wished I'd written. I think there's a current song on there, I think he loves his melodies. I would feel awful if I said a song that's not right. But Barbara Cook used to use that list for her concerts, when she wanted to do a Sondheim concert, but felt she needed to relieve the audience a little bit. So she would go to that list so she felt that she had somehow stayed a kin; which I will I'll steal that trick.

Paul: I understand that "The Song is You" is on that list.

Melissa: Oh, so you know.

Paul: Well, I just get...a sparrow flew in the open window and just landed. Yeah, but I like the "Trolley Song" is great. I think "Atchison Topeka" would have been a little bit too baroque for him. But thats great, the "Trolley Song". Well let's think about that.

The "Trolley Song": here is an emotional feeling and all pent-up excitement that is put into mechanical terms, musically and lyrically. It's all about "clang, clang, clang... chug, chug, chug." This is what your heart does when you're so crazy in a crush, that you're falling all over yourself.

Melissa: Absolutely. I mean if you read the book, "Finishing the Hat", he loves the wordplay of Cole Porter and he thinks that Alan Jay Lerner is just the bottom of the barrel. He hates him. He says it's, I think he says it's just devoid of personality. So you can see along the way that those he admired and those he didn't. And then you can compare it to that list. But this is itself, you can get a PHD in his opinions. It's just fun and I will get that PHD.

Paul: So let's go to your kids again, and how they... How do your kids relate to Sondheim do they play this record? Do they know the songs? What have they learned you through it

Melissa: Oh yeah. Yeah I have three daughters and I think you know it's sort of a Greek Greek myth for me. The Three Graces: each daughter has something about them that is so unique. All three sensitive to what I do and how much I miss it when I'm not able to do it because of being a mom is not easy. So their feelings about Sondheim as this was unfolding was "that mommy loves it and that mommy is really into this, that these songs are hard; they hear me singing in my living room and practicing".

And then there was a day where I just screamed, "Ahh guess who sent me an e- mail! I just got an e-mail! And guess who wrote to me?!" And they said, "Daddy?" I said, "No, Sondheim".

So they saw this great, this squealing Mom so they they've learned that if Sondheim writes to me I was a bit of... I freaked the first couple of times. So for them this matters and there are pictures of him. There's a picture or two in our living room of him... And so yes, they know. I think the song, "Not While I'm Around" is the most overtly sung song sung to them, and it also is probably the most alchemical odd thing that me and Ted Firth did to Sondheim's music. We really took Tobias's  song from "Sweeney Todd" and reinvented it. And it became much more universal about protectiveness. That track I've sort of dedicated to them, so when they hear it they'll be like,"that Mommy sings that for us". "Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around". That's a great song, but really really really meant to be a part of Sweeney Todd, which is about you know making human beings and turning them into meat pies. So we took it out of that context, quite....

Paul: Well that that brings me to, I guess you know the last thing. But it's that notion that the theater is dead now because all of the great stuff has been written and we've turned Broadway into a vehicle for attracting bus loads of out-of-towners to have a bang-for-buck, you know, show experience and go home. But looking ahead, you know, Sundheim broke a certain mold, and you could you could write a musical about, you know, making mincemeat of people. And maybe that's the direction that the art goes in going forward because the world is so much more toxic and complex and and what kind of crystal ball have you got on...

Melissa: On the state of the theatre?

Paul: State of the theatre, and where it can it go from here, especially in a post-Sondheim world.

Melissa: Yeah I mean I wonder... A week ago if you'd asked me this; on Monday I was a part of a reading of a new musical and it was the libretto and the lyrics and so on were written by Adam Gopnik. He is a sort of modern thinker about this state of the world and the state of New York City. And it went so well. People loved this story and it reminded me that a good story never really goes out of style. So the theater in it's future really depends on the stories we tell and the stories people want to hear and I think the reason it went so well was: it was a modest story about a small restaurant going out of business. The rent hikes and something beautiful and beautifully taken care of and beautifully loved by a family in New York City and circumstances and people not caring anymore for something beautifully cooked and beautifully made and they get pushed out of New York. And the audience was hooked. So the future of the theater is the future of a good story; a story people can relate to. But I understand the economics of the big Broadway shows. It's impossible to unders-- to know.

Paul: Well the more you keep on pushing into Sondheim, as we go forward. We're gonna lose him at a certain point and I hope that you'll be performing long after and be one of the the elder statesmen someday.

Melissa: I will. I promise.

Paul: Having had first-hand contact with the guy, you know.

Melissa: I promise. I have promised him in my own way that this this project came from the heart. It came from my, a most tender time in my life and now I intend to take my health and my youth and my ebullient girls and and all the good that's been coming towards me; much support and with so many good concerts coming up: I will use all that to continue really to to praise him. I really think he's he's one of the greatest musicians that ever walked the earth

Paul: Melissa Ericco, thank you so much. What's next?

Melissa: What? What's next? 

Paul: I mean apart from, you know, lunch and a cab and calling the Uber. But what is next?

Melissa: Well next I'm singing the lyrics and lyricists called "Wordplay" about Sondheim with Ted Chapin at the 92nd Street Y and some Lincoln Center songbook stuff with Michael Feinstein coming up and I'm going on to the "Playbill" cruise and I'm going to London with Sondheim concert.

Melissa: You know, I got a lot going on. I have a website.

Paul: This is a Sondheim "gravy train".

Melissa: Yeah. Well, I don't know if I'd like to say that that that it's the "gravy train": it's a train.

Melissa: I don't know how much gravy there is in it. But it's it's a passion of mine to to sing and share this music and if I have to have a little rolling bag and go from theater to theater and stage door to stage door: that's what I'll do and that's what I'm doing.

Paul: There are worse things. Melissa Errico: thank you so much.

Melissa: Thank you.