Melissa Errico on Her Love of London and How the City Shaped Her Career

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The New York-based cabaret star reflects on her love of London ahead of her 7/12 show there at Ronnie Scott's

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Certain cities become milestones in an artist’s life, the place away from home where, repeatedly, you find yourself at key moments of transition and self-discovery. New York is one for many – but I’m a native New Yorker, so it’s merely home for me. Paris is the one most American writers choose, where they escape to find themselves – but though I love Paris, it’s a place I visit to sing more than haunt with my soul.

My city is London. When I was a young girl in my teens in an internship at The Kings Head Pub, it was the place that I discovered, for the first time, that I loved the musical theater and could really sing its songs. Many early roles required me to play British girls like Eliza Doolittle on Broadway in “My Fair Lady,” Guenevere from “Camelot” with Jeremy Irons at The Hollywood Bowl and elsewhere, as well as George Bernard Shaw at The Irish Repertory Theater in New York – playing Candida, Major Barbara, Gwendolyn and, recently, Mrs. Patrick Campbell . For many years I found myself working in London at the Crazy Coqs nightclub in Soho, where I discovered myself as a cabaret singer. It was during that time, that I was overjoyed to sing at the memorial of my beloved mentor Michel Legrand at the Royal Festival Hall with the great musician James Pearson , artistic director of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Then, having devoted myself for several years to the music of Stephen Sondheim , I found myself last July 12 in Cadogan Hall singing his New York for London—and to my delight gave his Manhattan to a West End crowd.

Now, having spent the past few years of my life finding myself ever more ‘adjacent’ to the sweet and mysterious world of jazz, I’m coming back to London for the ultimate test of a jazz singer, invited to sing at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club on July 12, again, singing a program of Michel Legrand ’s great swooning songs. To make the occasion even more piquant, it will overlap with my tennis-star husband Patrick McEnroe ’s sixtieth birthday – which we will celebrate, one more curlicue, during the Wimbledon tournament, which has been a family regularity for the past thirty years, as Patrick has throughout that time either played in, or commented on it for American television. (Indeed, I’ll be on stage exactly at the same time as the Men’s Final match, so I’ll be singing to London just as he’s talking to America!) Every July has been a London, or rather a Wimbledon, July for us for so long – my three daughters have gotten used to traipsing over to Wimbledon in early summer. When they were small, we rented little houses and trampolines for them; now beautiful young women, they come restlessly for a few days, on their way to their own dance residences in Amsterdam and France, surrounded by artistic ambition and ambient boyfriends.

Still…. Ronnie Scott's! Oh, I’ve had great days at New York’s equivalent jazz club, Birdland, where I’ve been in Valentine’s residence for five straight years (Yes, I’ll be back in 2027!). But there, I’m singing something more like my usual – a mix of sultry-sexy crooning and stage soprano larking that led one critic to call me “a cross between Julie London and Julie Andrews .” At Ronnie’s, I know, I’m facing a legacy—I’m up against a roster of the big ones, the real jazz singers: Ella! Sassy! Peggy! And perhaps the one who haunts me most right now, the greatest British jazz singer, Cleo Laine , whose videos, with her in flowing, flowered Zandra Rhodes gowns, I watch ardently, not to say a little nervously.

I know that when Amy Winehouse wanted to show the world that she had jazz chops as well as pop chops, Ronnie’s was where she went to show them. Even my dear friend and supporter Gianni Valenti , the owner of Birdland, warned me, none too gently, that I had to play at the top of my game when I went to Ronnies. (It put me in mind of a moment a few years ago when, having been cast in a great part at the now legendary Kennedy Center – and yes, it was the Kennedy Center, then -- Sondheim festival, my classical pianist Dad said to me, “You’d better get to work! You’re good. But you’re not that good, yet.”) Fortunately, I’ll be supported– no, not supported, that sounds too small, partnered with is better, for ours is a musical marriage – the great Tedd Firth , who, like the greatest accompanists, makes the trip from jazz to cabaret concert and back effortlessly. (Tommy Flanagan and Ellis Larkins , Ella’s great accompanists, were solo geniuses, as Tedd is, too.)

But… what is it exactly that divides the jazz singer from the [concert-cabaret] Broadway singing that I started out with, doing the famously formidable score of “My Fair Lady” on Broadway in my twenties? Some of it, of course, is musical: you learn to play with the score rather than following it obediently; you back phrase and – front phrase? Is that a phrase? – weaving your own ‘reading’ of the song into the notes on the page. You improvise, to put it simply: something utterly forbidden when you’re on-stage, facing footlights.

But it’s more subtle than simply learning to swing; more artful than understanding improvisation. My first real jazz outing, scary as it was sublime, was at the Montreal Jazz Festival, where I found myself on stage in front of eight thousand people, while wearing an exceptionally low-cut gown – that I had chosen without perhaps enough, uh, forethought. (No regrettable malfunctions, just very revealing!) Yet, singing with the great jazz guitarist George Benson ’s band, doing Stevie Wonder and my beloved Michel Legrand , the gifted, road-weary boys behind me somehow locked into a groove, a place where what I was singing and what the musicians behind me were playing became one thing, one musical atmosphere, one experience.

It was the oneness, the unity, of the music that thrilled me – and I think thrilled the crowd. And that, perhaps, more than any other single thing, is what makes jazz, jazz and a jazz singer different from all the rest. You have to land the notes, find the feeling, above all communicate the words… but the band in jazz is not there to support you; it’s there to embrace you, to create an atmosphere where you’re as entangled with the musicians as any electron is with another spinning electron. It’s no accident that Cleo Laine is unthinkable without the presence of her sax-playing husband, John Dankworth , as essential to her as those Zandra Rhodes gowns. Or that on Ella’s legendary 1974 recording at Ronnie’s, “Ella in London” she’s accompanied not only by the great Flanagan— but also has Joe Pass on guitar (!) and Bobby Durham on drums, all geniuses capable of supporting their own bands and appearing on their own. I’m lucky that way, too -- in addition to Tedd, I’ll have Michel Legrand ’s own drummer Sebastian De Krom, David Archer on guitar, and Oli Hayhurst on bass.

That’s what separates jazz singing from the sound of the Broadway soprano— a commitment to the concept that musicians in concert can discover themselves as a single organism, in ways that startle even them. The thing happens! And when I think of that, suddenly, all these London Julys have a single shared purpose. All art – and for that matter all sport – ends up being a metaphor for family. For what my evergreen tennis analyzing husband and I have in common – and try to teach our daughters -- is a commitment to a common cause, to something in life that transcends your own immediate ego and becomes your life. You lose a lot in tennis and so you learn to value the company of the touring ‘family’ as much as the results of the tournament. You beat yourself up dancing ballet, as my daughters do – but you learn that it’s the unity of the corps that matters. And so, Mom, in her Zandra Rhodes -inspired flowered tribute gown, will try to weave a spell of common purpose with the brilliant musicians who support her, and put on a show worthy of those past singers whose ghosts, she hopes, stand to embrace her on stage at Ronnie’s.

Learn more about the artist at melissaerrico.com

Tickets to see Melissa Errico in London on July 12 are available on the Ronnie Scott’s website here .

Photo credit: Michael Hull

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/cabaret/article/My-Legrand-Love-of-London-MELISSA-ERRICO-GIRL-SINGER-IN-LONDON-20260612)._