PETER H. GISTELINCK Ratings: =skip it; =mediocre; =good; =excellent; =classic
Though Michel Legrand has rarely done this for any solo artist, he arranged, conducted and accompanied Melissa Errico with a 100-piece symphony on the Legrand Affair album, featuring Michel’s Oscar-winning songs, hidden French gems, as well as one new song with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The CD was produced by the legendary Phil Ramone and is featured in Ramone’s biography Making Records. In 2005, Legrand, having floated the idea of making an album with Errico, arrived at her New York apartment in mid-February for an extended visit. Errico had compiled a massive binder of Legrand songs, a collection so extensive that the composer himself had forgotten many of them. As they winnowed down the enormous list, Legrand shared the stories behind various songs and delighted both Errico and her husband (retired tennis pro and ESPN correspondent Patrick McEnroe) with colorful tales from his vibrant musical life, including a long-ago beach frolic with Miles Davis and a request he once made to an airline pilot to keep circling over L.A. until he finished a score due to a Hollywood studio. Their agreed goal was to create a deeply intimate album of ballads, and Legrand referenced two of his favorites—Shirley Horn’s Here’s to Life and Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now—as examples. Then Legrand insisted that the project needed to be hugely symphonic, suggesting a 100-piece orchestra; he suggested working with in Belgium with one of the top and most experienced orchestras for this genre of music, the Flemish Radio orchestra, now known as the Brussels Philharmonic. Errico wondered about creating something intimate in so grand a setting, but didn’t question her friend’s vast expertise. Legrand also suggested they reach out to “Phil” for assistance. Only when he arrived at Errico’s door the next morning did she realize that the Phil in question was legendary producer Phil Ramone. The following day, Legrand, Ramone and Errico went into the studio to record demos of several of their selected songs with bassist David Finck and drummer Steve Gadd, the composer himself at the piano. Legrand then returned to France to write the orchestrations, visited once by Errico and Ramone for rehearsals. Legrand and Errico next met in Toronto, several months later. Taking a one-day break from the hit revival of Finian’s Rainbow, Errico flew to Canada to hear a new song, “In Another Life,” Legrand had just completed, with lyrics from his longtime friends and frequent collaborators, Marilyn and Alan Bergman. Errico loved the song, and it was added to a list that had now grown to 15 selections. (Hers would not, however, be the firstto-market recording of “In Another Life.” Jack Jones beat her by a few months, including the song on his Bergman tribute, Love Makes the Changes). Another few months passed, and Errico found herself in Belgium, with Legrand and Ramone, for the recording of the music tracks. As promised, Legrand had delivered 100 musicians—the Flemish Radio Orchestra (now
known as the Brussels Philharmonic)—to a Leuven concert hall. Errico didn’t, however, hear the final, recorded orchestrations until several weeks later, listening to them on a portable CD player while being piloted by Legrand across the Pyrenees for a brief vacation in Spain. In August 2006, Legrand and Errico met again in L.A. She was there for a film project, he was scheduled for a series of jazz concerts, and insisted on including both Errico and her Amour and Finian’s Rainbow costar Malcolm Gets, in several of his performances. (As an aside, Gets and Errico unite for a terrific medley of “Blue Skies” and “It’s a Lovely Day Today” on his 2009 album, The Journey Home). They also spent time with the Bergmans, whose lyrics accompany nine of the finished CD’s tracks. Errico, now several months pregnant with her first child, again teamed with Michel in New York at Joe’s Pub and Dizzy’s at Lincoln Center. Soon after, Errico and McEnroe’s daughter, Victoria, was born, followed two years later by twin sisters, Diana and Juliette. Finally, in 2010, Errico was able to clear space in her parenting and professional schedule to lay down the vocal tracks in New York, assisted by the album’s co-producer, acclaimed theater and concert director Richard Jay-Alexander. The finished album does, remarkably, manage to sound both imposingly majestic and intimate, mirroring the hushed grandeur of Barbra Streisand’s recent projects, Love Is the Answer and What Matters Most (which, as an all-Bergman salute, also includes significant Legrand material—overlapping with Errico on one track, “The Windmills of Your Mind”). Like Streisand, Errico has a voice built to reach the upper balconies but is equally, exceptionally, capable of cozier, more introspective readings. Her tender handling of “I Will Wait for You” (originally written by Legrand as the main theme for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) amid waves of swirling waves of strings provides stunningly beautiful proof. Many of the selections will be immediately recognizable, including such Bergman-enhanced gems as “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” “The Summer Knows,” “How Do You Keep the Music Playing” and “You Must Believe In Spring.” All are gorgeously rendered, as is the delicate Legrand-Johnny Mercer masterpiece “Once Upon a Summertime.” But it is the more obscure choices—particularly “Dis Moi” from the 1971 film Un Peu de Soleil l’Eau Froide (A Few Hours of Sunlight), the gentlest, sparest of
Legrand’s orchestrations, the powerfully emotive, almost anthemic, “Celui-La” (which Legrand wrote the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, in response to the tragedy), the fragile “Martina,” unraveled like a fractured lullaby, and the fresh “In Another Life,” a wonderfully wistful tale of lost romance—that make Legrand Affair especially distinctive. Legrand Affair was released October 18 by Ghostlight Records. The album was Co-Produced by Richard Jay-Alexander, Errico’s concert director, close collaborator and longtime friend (responsible for casting Errico as Cosette in the first national touring company of Les Miserables, when she was an 18 year-old freshman at Yale.) Legrand Affair marks Errico’s third solo release, following Blue Like That (EMI) and Lullabies and Wildflowers (VMG/Universal). Additionally, it is her third collaboration with Ghostlight Records. She appeared on the label’s Finian’s Rainbow recording, as well as on their Broadway cast album of Michel Legrand’s Amour. Ghostlight will also reissue Lullabies and Wildflowers. Melissa Errico is one of the most versatile women to have come out of this Broadway’s young generation, proving herself both a great interpreter of classic musicals and modern music alike, as well as a gifted recording artist and film/television presence—she has starred in seven Broadway musicals. She has been called everything from “divine” to “the voice of enchantment” to “one of the most valuable assets of the musical theater” by the New York Times as well as “incandescent” (Daily News) and “blessed with every attribute a grand dame of Broadway requires: star power, voice, looks, ability, personality, technique. An aphrodisiac, as it were, that galvanizes a musical into life” (Clive Barnes). “Our most earthy and soulful ingenue... She both sparkles and is unmannered,” wrote USA Today and her recordings have been described as “intimate exhalations, sung with her hearton-sleeve” by Billboard, “a classy classic sound, with taste and imagination” by the Washington Post, and “...ethereal, gorgeous, elegant, popular. Delivered with inward emotion and real artistry” by the New York Times. Upon coming to hear her sing the role of Fiona in Brigadoon in a one-night-only concert on Broadway in June 2010, Ben Brantley of the Times wrote “this beautifully sung performance had the bewitched aura of the
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