Join Tony award nominee Melissa Errico — called by the New York Times, “one of the deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters,“ of the work of Stephen Sondheim — in a two-day workshop devoted to the art of singing his music.
Teaching alongside Melissa will be award-winning cabaret performer and historian Michael Kirk Lane, and acclaimed cabaret musical director Yasuhiko (Yaz) Fukuoka. This team will also be joined by librettist, screenplay writer, and Sondheim expert Michael Mitnick in this immersive workshop. Designed to shed light on the practice and techniques of singing Sondheim, it will also touch on the ways that Errico, famously, ‘turns a set list into a story’ — goes about taking songs from their original theatrical context while reimagining them in a cycle that has a narrative arc and meaning all its own.
On Friday night, the students will be asked to arrive with a Sondheim number they particularly want to sing, rehearse it, and share it with the class. All day Saturday, Melissa will work with the students on deepening their interpretation and sharpening their Sondheim sensibilities — and suggest how to offer the song ‘on its own terms’, not necessarily as a character study within the original show’s story, but as a story in itself. Drawing on her own many years of work with Sondheim himself, she will educate the students both on the mechanics of singing and on shaping the inner dramatics of a Sondheim concert.
Those not interested in performing are invited to join the workshop as auditors.
Fee for Auditors: $100 before Oct 4, $150 after Oct 4 Fee for Performers: $525
Fri, Oct 25: 6-9 pm
Sat, Oct 26: 10 am-1 pm BREAK 2-5 pm
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Michael Kirk Lane is an award-winning cabaret artist, most recently winning Manhattan Association of Cabaret Awards in both 2022 and 2020. He also was the recipient of the 2018 BroadwayWorld Cabaret Award for Best Cabaret Show. Stephen Mosher of BroadwayWorld Cabaret has called Lane “one of the most popular performers and people working in cabaret today.” Cabaret Scenes Magazine has deemed Lane’s work “musical comedy heaven.”
Beyond his own experience performing in cabaret, Lane’s experience managing two of the city’s most renowne ...
Beyond his own experience performing in cabaret, Lane’s experience managing two of the city’s most renowned cabaret venues (The Laurie Beechman Theatre, Don’t Tell Mama) offers him a unique vantage point and perspective on the art form.
As a teaching artist for over 20 years, Lane has taught all ages from pre-school to retirement homes. In each class he brings the same philosophy to his teaching, no matter the age of the students. “Art, Theatre, and Music are ways for us to connect with our most authentic self, and to explore the world around us.”
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Interpreting Sondheim from Stage to Concert, Performance Workshop with Melissa Errico
Yasuhiko “Yaz” Fukuoka is a Drama Desk and MAC Awards nominated pianist, film composer, arranger, and music producer based in NYC. He also music-directs new musicals and cabaret shows. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Birdland, Festival de Cannes and other venues in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.yahzy.com.
Melissa Errico is a Tony Award-nominated Broadway actress, singer, and author. Touring the world with her inimitable thematic concerts, from Singapore to Paris to San Francisco and beyond. The New York Times summed up her appeal simply: “Any chance to hear Melissa Errico sing is a chance worth taking” …
Melissa Errico is a Tony Award-nominated Broadway actress, singer, and author. Touring the world with her inimitable thematic concerts, from Singapore to Paris to San Francisco and beyond. The New York Times summed up her appeal simply: “Any chance to hear Melissa Errico sing is a chance worth taking.”
Her concerts in the past year alone have included a Paris duet in 2023 with her frequent singing partner Isabelle Georges, broadcast nationally on Radio France, followed by a sold-out cabaret at the historic Le Bal Blomet. In that same summer, she opened for music icon George Benson at the Montreal Jazz Festival. She has also sung countless concerts of American song, ranging from Randy Newman to Irving Berlin, including stints at The 92nd Street Y, Birdland, Joe’s Pub, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Allen Room, and Feinstein’s/ 54 Below.
First known for her starring roles on Broadway, including My Fair Lady, High Society, Anna Karenina, White Christmas, Dracula, and Les Misérables, Melissa 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 more, as well as 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.
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 ten interpreters of his work. Her 2018 album, Sondheim Sublime was called by The Wall Street Journal “The best all-Sondheim album ever recorded.” Her second Sondheim album, Sondheim In The City, was released on February 16, 2024, and earned her still more praise from the Times as, “one of Sondheim’s deepest-hearted but lightest touch interpreters.”
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.
Michael Mitnick is a playwright and songwriter.
Theatre works include Scotland, PA (New York Times Critics’ Pick, The Roundabout Theatre Company), Fly By Night (Drama Desk-nominated Best Musical, Playwrights Horizons), Mysterious Circumstances (The Geffen Playhouse), Sex Lives of Our Parents (Second Stage), The Siegel (South Coast Repertory), and Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman (The Wild Project) …
Theatre works include Scotland, PA (New York Times Critics’ Pick, The Roundabout Theatre Company), Fly By Night (Drama Desk-nominated Best Musical, Playwrights Horizons), Mysterious Circumstances (The Geffen Playhouse), Sex Lives of Our Parents (Second Stage), The Siegel (South Coast Repertory), and Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman (The Wild Project). His music and lyrics have been sung at Lincoln Center, The Guggenheim, Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, and on HBO.
Films include The Current War (dir. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon), The Giver (dir. Phillip Noyce), The Staggering Girl (Cannes Film Festival Selection) and O Night Divine (both dir. Luca Guadagnino).
Michael has an MFA in Playwriting from The Yale School of Drama. He is from Pittsburgh and lives in New York City.
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