Renowned Singer/Actress Melissa Errico Embraces Film Noir with Latest Album

Renowned singer, actress and author Melissa Errico follows up her Ghostlight releases, "Legrand Affair" and "Sondheim Sublime," with a compelling new studio album, "Out Of The Dark: The Film Noir Project."

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, when the world was locked away in lonely rooms with only old movies to watch at midnight, Errico suddenly returned to one of her life-long obsessions – noir! The genre is noted for its dark, disturbing sensibility of intractable fatalism that Paris existentialists discovered in American film during the 1940s. Noir continues to run as a mesmerizing, mysterious current through modern movies and music, and Errico has embraced it in her own artistic endeavors. She recently co-curated a film festival of noir classics at New York's French Institute Alliance Française, wrote an essay in The New York Times about having a black-sequined gown specially made to play the role of the femme fatale on stage, and offered Manhattan a concert of noir songs.

"I've always loved noir songs. They thrill me with their sensuality. I loved finding my lost inner femme fatale. This album is about another time and this time, both," she said.

Her new studio album, "Out Of The Dark: The Film Noir Project," due for a Feb. 18 release on Ghostlight Records, presents a masterly-crafted song cycle, all black-velvet piano and vibraphone tones, telling a complete story of hope, despair, and hope renewed. Her song selections reach from noir classics, such as "Laura" and "The Bad and The Beautiful," into the French chansons of the 1950s and '60s. Also included in the 17-song collection are Cy Coleman and David Zippel's "With Every Breath I Take" (from the Broadway musical, "City of Angels"), Dietz & Schwartz's "Haunted Heart" (1948), Arlen and Gershwin's "The Man That Got Away" (1953), Lionel Newman's "Again"(1948), and Harry Warren and Leo Robin's mischievous "Checkin' My Heart" (1952). Plus: four brand new songs composed by Michel Legrand, David Shire, and the late Peter Foley, with words by her frequent collaborator Adam Gopnik, all arranged by musical director/pianist Tedd Firth.

"I see this album as a kind of fever dream. I want the listener to swoon at the enchantments of the music while joining me on a trip from flirtatious mystery ... to true despair ... to the light of hope," says Errico

The album is now available for pre-order from Ghostlight, Amazon, iTunes, Apple Music and will be available for digital download on all platforms on Feb. 18.

Errico will also offer album release concerts at Feinstein's/54 Below Feb 18 and 19 at 7 p.m. For more info: follow this link.