(Vocal Jazz) [WEB] Melissa Errico - Sondheim Sublime - 2018, FLAC (tracks), lossless

In Sondheim Sublime Melissa Errico (best known for her starring roles on Broadway in the musicals My Fair Lady, Anna Karenina, High Society, Dracula, White Christmas and Amour which won her a Tony nomination for “Best Actress” and began a longtime association with its composer Michel Legrand) shows us a side of Stephen Sondheim’s music that no singer has explored so completely before. It’s not the satiric or slyly disillusioned Sondheim – it’s the soulful Sondheim, the heartfelt, hungering Sondheim, author of songs of aching love and slowly dawning wisdom, the exalted, and reflective Sondheim: Sondheim Sublime. Accompanied by pianist Tedd Firth, Errico sings in a tone by turns hushed, electric and ecstatic, giving us a new understanding of the emotional intensity that has always equaled Sondheim’s virtuosic verbal magic. It’s a program of songs of love and life lessons, including a perfectly protective mother’s version of “Not While I’m Around” – while still having time for a provocative “Sooner or Later.” An album to place alongside her earlier Legrand Affair and Lullabies and Wildflowers as part of a uniquely lyrical and romantic library, Sondheim Sublime is an Errico album meant for the three-o-clocks in the mornings of the soul, when love is lost and wisdoms sought from one wise friend.