I Can Dream, Can’t I? Melissa Errico Sings at Southampton Arts Center

What better way to end the summer than with a song? Broadway actress, vocalist and writer Melissa Errico brings her newest show, I Can Dream, Can’t I? — Songs of Love, Longing & Summertime to Southampton Arts Center (SAC) at 7 p.m. on Aug. 31.

Errico’s Sunday night performance will debut her upcoming duo album with jazz pianist Tedd Firth, titled I Can Dream, Can’t I?, set to be released in October. Some tracks will also be released through September along with music videos. This collection features songs by Duke Ellington, Dave Frishberg, Jerome Kern, Joni Mitchell, Cole Porter, David Shire and more. Following her 2024 show at SAC called Melissa Sings the Summer, this year’s end-of-summer production brings on a new theme.

“I always give my concert a little twist: I don’t wanna give away too much, but this year I’ve spent the whole summer in Europe, I’ve bought the most beautiful 1950s dress in Capri in Italy, the music goes perfectly with the history of a dress like that,” says Errico. “I like to create an evening for people, especially in the summer, where they can introspect a little but also twinkle a little.”

About the album, Errico explains, “It’s inspired by the famous album of Peggy Lee and George Shearing. He was a great jazz pianist and I was inspired to try to make our version of that. It’s a neo-version of her album with George Shearing called Beauty and the Beat!, [which was] a conversation, if you will, between a woman, her secrets, her illusions: it’s a conversation between me and Tedd.”

Originally from New York City, Errico is known for playing Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway show My Fair Lady, among many other roles. Over her decades-spanning career, she has released solo projects including studio recordings of theater classics, such as her 2024 collection Sondheim in the City.

“I’ve known since I was 12 that I wanted to be a singer and I haven’t changed. Being a professional singer is not as simple as I thought [as a child], and yet I’m still inspired in the same cheerful manner I was inspired as a 12-year-old. I saw a Broadway show written by Rodgers and Hart, and I was crying and crying, and I said to my mother, ‘Who are those people? How do I get up there?’” remembers Errico. “I learned how to sing, I was in Les Mis, Anna Karenina and My Fair Lady on Broadway all before I was 22. I had a bit of a headstart.”

Errico recalls her most recent ventures: “Most of my mature career, in my 30s and 40s, I’ve been singing Stephen Sondheim. On July 12, I made my concert hall debut in London at Cadogan Hall. It was amazing, I got standing ovations a couple of times: I’m on the clouds! I sang all Stephen Sondheim.”

“I always love coming back to the Hamptons because while I was doing all this Broadway stuff, I always used to summer out here. I’m a real Hamptons girl: I’ve been here forever! My husband and I fell in love in Sag Harbor, we’ve been married 27 years and we have three teenagers,” Errico shares. “I’m so thrilled to be asked back [to SAC]! I’ll always cherish these opportunities. It’s simple: we’re gonna have a good time.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit southamptonartscenter.org