Wellness, lately, has come to mean: connection. A kind of flow of energy, and a flow that happens with ease. I suppose the idea of “wellness” changes at different times in one’s life, but I have felt my most healthy and most joyful, especially during and after the pandemic, while making music. A flow between me and musicians, and a flow between me and an audience, small or large. Of course for a while there, I had no real people to sing to, only a Zoom screen. Somehow, though, the energy remained. Even when limited to livestreaming concerts, I learned how deeply people want to connect, and that creativity could still survive under the most isolated conditions. Now, I’m on the road again, traveling from San Francisco to London to Indianapolis to Florida and back to Palm Springs and back to Florida. (You get the idea!) The map of my concert tour has been like the veins of my own wellness, as blood would flow from a heart to the distances of fingers and toes. When I can sing, I am more myself. Everyone knows the song “Over the Rainbow.” The lyricist for that song, Yip Harburg, once said, “Words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling, but a song makes you feel a thought.” For me, that makes songs the one way we have to connect through heart and head at the same time; a singer’s voice becomes the intermediary between them giving birth to feel good music.
Melissa Errico will be appearing in Southampton on July 27 at 6:30PM at Agawam Park (51 Pond Lane) as part of Southampton Cultural Center’s Concerts in the Park series. Her special summer concert, Broadway Baby, features Errico setting her life to the Broadway songs that she has sung and owned.
