This Sunday, 12th July, Melissa Errico is making her Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club debut when she performs her The Summer Knows show at 12pm, celebrating legendary composer Michel Legrand alongside US pianist Tedd Firth. Melissa previously recorded with Michel Legrand, with him composing the Brussels Philharmonic, and she was entrusted by him and lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman for their final collaboration. Previously, Melissa has performed her Sondheim in the City show in London and New York, and released an album of the same name, and she had a sold-out appearance at Cadogan Hall and performed at Montreal Jazz Festival, opening for George Benson. Earlier this year, Melissa released her latest album I Can Dream, Can’t I? with Tedd Firth. Also having an extensive theatre career, Melissa played Eliza Doolittle in the 1993 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady and originated the role of Tracy Samantha Lord in High Society on Broadway. Further stage projects for Melissa include the National Tour of Les Misérables as Cosette, the original production of Anna Karenina as Kitty Alexandrovna, Sunday in the Park with George, Finian’s Rainbow and the 2009 Broadway production of White Christmas as Betty Haynes. For Melissa’s portrayal of Isabelle in Michel Legrand’s musical Amour, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, and on screen, she played Andrea in Life or Something Like It alongside Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns. We recently caught up with Melissa, who told us about performing The Summer Knows show at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London this Sunday, her previous Sondheim in the City shows, releasing her album I Can Dream, Can’t I? with Tedd Firth earlier this year and her extensive stage career including playing Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Betty Haynes in White Christmas.

You are making your Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club debut this Sunday, 12th July, at 12pm with your show The Summer Knows; what are you looking forward to most about performing there?

Ronnie’s is the top of the jazz tree, and I’m beyond happy to have climbed up and sought a shiny apple or two to reach for. My work in recent years has been a kind of dance between Broadway song and the ecstatic edges of jazz singing. Steve Sondheim said once that I was both an actress and a ‘girl singer’, by which he meant the kind of Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, free-form singing that I love. I’m always rooted in storytelling – diction, always being understood, is vital to me – but I love to unwind spools of surprise within the story.

With the show being a celebration of the music of legendary composer Michel Legrand, what can audiences expect from the event, and why would you recommend booking tickets?

I can promise a swooping, sexy and seductive afternoon of jazz song. I’ll be with a first-class group of true jazz musicians, and something surreal tends to happen when you entangle musical free souls with Legrand’s music exactly because, despite all his French exactitude, he was a crazy free soul himself.

Michel’s music is something that you entwine with, wrap yourself around, and spin like ribbons on a Maypole. I hope to catch the listeners in that free dance. All the sensuality of The Summer Knows and Once Upon A Summertime will be there – so a perfect date brunch! While within the music, I’ll still tell all of his – and the Bergmans’ – deep stories of love and loss and longing.

What is it like working with US pianist Tedd Firth, who will be joining you at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club with his hand-picked group this weekend?

Tedd is a true jazz poet. His first statement is never his last statement, and even after all these years together, he still will amaze me every time with some wild burst of improvised passion. It’s so extraordinary, the emotional clouds and fire that rise from this modest and undemonstrative man.

But maybe all the great jazz pianists were like that. Bill Evans bends over the piano, and poetry ascends. Tedd is like that too. And an ideal accompanist, as Evans was, because he never gets in your way. Just gently shows the way forward, and then the way home.

How was it recording with Michel Legrand, with him conducting the Brussels Philharmonic, and having him and lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman entrust you to debut their final collaboration?

It was one of the great experiences of a lifetime. I remember walking into the recording session in Belgium, fresh off the plane, with this enormous orchestra spread out to perform the music in a spirit that Michel had defined as ‘oceanic yet intimate’. I couldn’t help crying at the beauty of it all.

Knowing Michel, yes, meant knowing Alan and Marilyn. They came through with a beautiful new verse for me for You Must Believe In Spring, keyed to post-9/11 New York, and then – I think this is the story you’re thinking of – long years later, I asked the then 90-something Alan if there was any final work of their collaboration with Michel, after a film song, Hurry Home, that I had already recorded for them. “Yes”, he said. There was one more: a beautiful song called I Haven’t Thought of This in Quite a While.

I seized on it, of course, and made what I think is the only recording of it. To call it an honour isn’t to call it enough – but it was also a pleasure since it was a song about a woman painfully, and then poignantly, retrospecting a long marriage with her partner gone. A song in which I could fully lose myself.

Can you tell us about your show Sondheim in the City, which you’ve performed in both New York and London, and how long was your album of the same name in the making?

I’ve been singing Sondheim my whole adult life and made an album of his most secret and sensual songs, Sondheim Sublime. But I wanted to land on the outer Steve as well – the matchless urban poet.

So, I jumped into his city songs, and over a year or so of work, Rob Mathes, Tedd and I, with a little help from acute Sondheimians like Michael Mitnick and Adam Gopnik, found the best of the best. There are some familiar songs, like Another Hundred People, and some deep cuts, including Dawn, our opener.

It even has a kind of ‘plot’, from waking up crazy in the hushed city, to being overwhelmed by the noise and people, to finding a kind of peaceful moment or two with a friend to hide away in. Adam Gopnik likes to say that it’s a tribute to urban pluralism – to the sheer variety of kinds and possibilities in New York. It’s the same theme as Sondheim’s great Sunday, set in Paris, which everyone sang at his memorial.

What do you enjoy most about visiting and performing in London, where you’ve previously had a sold-out appearance at Cadogan Hall?

London is kind of my second artistic home. I’ve been coming here since I was a teenager, and so many key leaps and risk-takings of my life have happened here (I even lost my virginity here in London – with a theatre guy, of course).

Cadogan Hall was the top of the tree of concert performance, as Ronnie’s is of jazz singing. I don’t know why a hyper-expressive Italian girl like me resonates with London audiences, although it’s maybe interesting that I’ve played British roles all my acting life, from Eliza to Candida.

There must be some weird, buried British branch of the family in Sicily. Or maybe the British culture of understatement is grateful for all my Italian overcharge!

You’ve performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival opening for George Benson, what was this like?

A dream. His band locked in behind me and we were off, in front of thousands of people.

How was it recording and releasing your latest album, I Can Dream, Can’t I?, earlier this year alongside Tedd Firth?

It was the realisation of a long-held dream, especially of Tedd’s. He’d always wanted to go into a studio and improvise – to not have arrangements, but to work intuitively and without any expectations.

We love trusting each other musically, and I believe we found some extraordinary gems from the songbook. I could imagine a recital type experience at the gorgeous Wigmore Hall someday, where Tedd could be a human orchestra. The piano as my only inner world.

Let’s dream it. Can’t I?

As a stage actor, you starred as Eliza Doolittle in the 1993 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady and originated the role of Tracy Samantha Lord in High Society on Broadway; what are some of your favourite memories from those productions?

Mastering Eliza’s voice and phonology – which I did with a great coach, and in London again of course – was a challenge and a gift. Learning Cockney slang as her underlying grammar was a huge help in capturing who she was and what she sounded like. Sometimes it’s helpful to work from the outside in on a character in that way.

Tracy Lord is just Eliza’s opposite: a somewhat spoiled and regal girl who needs a comeuppance. In the original production, which we played in San Francisco, it opened with me singing I Am Loved with undue complacency. It set the show up.

I still make It’s Alright with Me from that show the sexy summit of a lot of my concert shows. It was an honour to originate a Broadway role, which I’ve only done three times – Legrand’s Amour and Mina in Dracula, The Musical.

Your theatre career has also included the National Tour of Les Misérables as Cosette, the original Broadway production of Anna Karenina as Kitty Alexandrovna, Sunday in the Park with George at the Kennedy Center, Finian’s Rainbow, and the 2009 Broadway production of White Christmas as Betty Haynes; can you share some of your stand-out highlights?

As you see, all those plays require a corset.

The highlight of each was learning that each woman had something very different under her proverbial petticoat. Cosette was my first big role (I was 18) and I think I lived the role backstage almost to an extreme. I bought a small bird and kept it in my dressing room in a lovely cage, while reading Victor Hugo in my spare time. I had a very romantic view of my job.

Betty was a thrill because I’d gotten to know Rosemary Clooney late in her career, and she was a wonderful role model of the life of a “girl singer” (of course, the title of her book). She sang songs like they were unfolding lessons in real time.

Playing Dot was euphoria for the art historian in me. Every play has been, if you will, a kind of Glocca Morra.

How did you find the experience working on Michel Legrand’s musical Amour, and what did it mean to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for your portrayal of Isabelle?

I was so proud to be cast in that role exactly because I’d had Legrand in my life from girlhood, since he was a passion of my pianist father.

Meeting him, and having him appreciate the spirit of my singing – enough to want to make a retrospective record with me even while we were working on the show – were just enormous gifts.

The show may not have ‘worked’ in the conventional commercial sense – few shows do – but it worked for the audience, and it worked for me. Nothing made me happier than walking the poster over to Joe Allen’s, where they hang only supposedly ‘unsuccessful’ shows. I’ve never been prouder.

What do you remember most from filming Life or Something Like It, where you played Andrea alongside Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns?

I remember loving Angelina. And I remember her bold defense of her blonde wig which no one wanted. She was right – it was a wonderful look for her.

I loved the lunch scene. We had a brilliant friendship all through shooting, and that particular day she had an important phone call with Billy Bob (Thornton). She really needed my support with juggling and staying focused. We stayed relaxed, and it shows on film. I believe she is a goddess.

I remember overhearing the director say, “We need to get a sports broadcaster for the movie”. I said, “I have one in my hotel room! Patrick McEnroe is my husband”. So, they cast him! Watch the final scene – my character ends up with him.

How did you first get into performing, and was it always something you wanted to pursue professionally?

I’ve told the story a million times, but I never tire of it.

It was my 12th birthday, and my parents took me to a revival of On Your Toes as a treat. Within 10 minutes I was weeping with delight, desire and confusion.

“Who are these people? Where do they come from? And how can I join them?” I tearfully demanded of my mother.

I suppose I’ve been asking the same question ever since. Even now that I’m up there on the other side, I still commune with my 12-year-old self, yearning to be seen, to be understood and, above all, yearning to sing my life instead of just speak it.

It’s my quest. I’ve sometimes been disappointed, but never disillusioned.

How do you like to spend your free time?

Spare time? I have three teenage daughters who work around the clock – dancing, filmmaking and now even finance. There is no spare time. There is rich time together though.

Whenever I do have a moment, I try to devote it to my writing. I’ve been writing a series of memoir essays for The New York Times in New York about being an actress, and I am determined to finally turn them into a book.

Do you have any upcoming projects or career plans that you’re able to talk about?

That book! And beyond that, more concerts, cabarets and gigs, and there’s another Sondheim record lurking in the woods as well! And David Shire is working on a new musical!

Life is rich, and playing Ronnie’s only makes it richer.

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