Broadway star Melissa Errico brings ‘Sondheim in the City’ to Mercyhurst stage

Tony-nominated Broadway singer, actress, recording artist, and author Melissa Errico returns to Mercyhurst University and her favorite songwriter with an entirely new program of Stephen Sondheim songs, celebrating her new album, “Sondheim In The City.” Praised in The New York Times as “a New York house tour of thrill and heartbreak... from one of Sondheim’s deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters” and hailed by Gramophone magazine as a work that “takes the musical theater compilation album to a new level,” Errico will share her new collection at Walker Recital Hall on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 7:30 p.m., accompanied by her longtime musical director Tedd Firth. 
 
“The finest all-Sondheim album ever recorded” was the Wall Street Journal’s verdict on Errico’s ecstatic, 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 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,” Errico will sound out New York as she rounds out her portrait of Sondheim—and, as always in an Errico show, there will be smart talk from the celebrated New York Times columnist to go along with her sublime singing. 
 
Errico’s history with Sondheim began when he selected her to star as Dot in “Sunday In The Park With George” at the Kennedy Center, then as Clara in “Passion” at Classic Stage Company, then in the NY City Center Encores! production of “Do I Hear A Waltz?” In 2020, she sang “Children and Art” in the Sondheim 90th Birthday Concert, “Take Me To The World,” and was featured on PBS television in a documentary special in which she sang a feminist version of “Finishing The Hat” and joined Adam Gopnik and Raul Esparza to talk “Sondheim on Poetry in America.” She was also featured in the New York Times tribute to Sondheim in November 2021 as one of the top 10 interpreters of his work.  
 
Touring the world with her inimitable thematic concerts, from Singapore to Paris to San Francisco and beyond, Errico has built a unique niche in the world of theater and jazz—so much so that when Steven Reineke, principal conductor of the New York Pops, introduced her Carnegie Hall debut, he announced that “Melissa Errico is a unique force in the musical life of New York City: a Broadway star, a concert artist, and an author who regularly contributes essays to the New York Times. There’s really no one like her!” The Times itself summed up her appeal simply: “Any chance to hear Melissa Errico sing is a chance worth taking.” 
 
Errico made her first Erie appearance in October 2020 when she joined MIAC Artistic Director Dr. Brett D. Johnson via livestream for a special hour-long program of songs and stories from her celebrated career. In April 2022, she performed a ravishing concert on the stage of the beautiful Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center, captivating a crowd of MIAC supporters with Broadway, film, and jazz favorites by the multi-Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand with additional songs by Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, Randy Newman, and others. She returned in September 2023 to headline MIAC’s film noir-inspired soirée, mesmerizing a standing-room-only crowd with a program of swinging and sexy standards. Her latest collaboration with MIAC, “Diva to Diva,” is a series of conversations with other dazzling guest artists that gives audiences a chance to hear a little behind-the-scenes chat between two experienced professionals who have chosen the strange and perilous path of the concert/cabaret singer as their preferred means of personal expression. 
 
Her other recent concerts have included a Paris duet with her frequent singing partner Isabelle Georges, broadcast nationally on Radio France, followed by a sold-out cabaret at the historic Le Bal Blomet, and appearances in London. To rapturous response, she opened for music icon George Benson at the Montreal Jazz Festival. She has continued to tour from coast to coast and will make her London concert hall debut singing Sondheim in London on July 12, 2025. She has begun to expand into symphonic work and has made two successful appearances with orchestras in the US and Canada, with a holiday series ahead with the Syracuse Symphony conducted by Tedd Firth. She is also creating an original solo concert of early WWI jazz for the Kennedy Center in May. She and Tedd Firth have finished recording a new album of American Songbook music, which she mysteriously refers to as “...the field of poppies from which sprang Sondheim’s opium.” For tour dates, see https://melissaerrico.com/calendar/.  
 
First known for her starring roles on Broadway, including “My Fair Lady,” “High Society,” “Anna Karenina,” “White Christmas,” “Dracula,” and “Les Misérables,” Errico has had a wide-ranging career from television and film to recording. She starred in the CBS show “Central Park West” and played roles on “Blue Bloods,” “The Knick,” and “Billions” on Showtime. She has starred in many non-musical roles by Shaw and Oscar Wilde, including “Dear Liar” in the spring of 2023, playing George Bernard Shaw’s original Eliza Doolittle. 
 
She is currently working on expanding her collected New York Times essays about a singer’s strange life on the stage and road, gathered under the heading “Scenes From An Acting Life,” into a book. She has three daughters and is married to tennis player and journalist Patrick McEnroe. 
 
Tickets, priced $40-$50, can be purchased online at miac.universitytickets.com, over the phone at 814-824-3000, or in person at the Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center box office (Tues.-Thurs., noon-5 p.m.). Each order is subject to a $4 per ticket processing fee, regardless of purchase or payment method. 
 
This performance is made possible through the generous support of B. Scott Kern, Esq. & Amy Cuzzola-Kern, Ph.D., and the 2024-2025 MIAC Live season is sponsored by Alan & Patti Schaal and VNET, with additional support from the Greater Erie Alliance for Equality and the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority.