Legendary Singer Melissa Manchester Returns! – Breaking Entertainment News
Melissa Manchester Photo credit: Nick Spanos
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Melissa Manchester will celebrate her remarkable 50-year career in show business with a dazzling, all-new show titled “50 Threads: An Artist’s Journey” at 54 Below in New York City. Described as a “musical memoir,” “50 Threads: An Artist’s Journey” will run for three nights, beginning Thursday, June 12, and ending Saturday, June 14.
Tickets for 50 Threads: An Artist’s Journey are available HERE.
Manchester, the recent recipient of the Boston Theater Critics Association’s Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Visiting Featured Performance for her role of Mrs. Brice in Funny Girl, conceived “50 Threads” as an autobiographical show that will unfold in both monologues and songs, beginning with her first musical memories – hearing her father play bassoon, then falling under the spell of Ella Fitzgerald at age five – and covering key aspects of her development.
“I studied songwriting with Paul Simon, and of course, Laura Nyro was my muse,” she says. “Soon I met Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamlisch, both of whom I collaborated with. A lot of brilliant talents figure into my story.”
Manchester will accompany herself at times on piano, and she will be joined by keyboardist Tedd Firth and singer-percussionist Susan Holder. Fans can expect to hear a wide range of treasures from Manchester’s glorious catalog. The setlist will include beloved hits like “Midnight Blue,” “Whenever I Call You Friend,” “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” “Come In From the Rain,” “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” and more.
As she did on her acclaimed recent album RE:VIEW, Manchester will rework and reimagine several of her nineteen Billboard charted classics, particularly on solo songs she turned into duets. “We’ll have my collaborators from RE:VIEW on video screens for me to sing live with. It will be a lot of fun,” she says.
Among them are Kenny Loggins, who will duet with Manchester on “Whenever I Call You Friend.” “I wrote the song with Kenny, but we never got a chance to record it,” she says. “The RE:VIEW version has a different groove, and the way I stacked the vocals has a whole new approach. Kenny sounds fantastic with that piercing clarion call of a voice. And Dave Koz is on sax – it’s a bunch of sweetness.”
Manchester will also duet with Dolly Parton on video. Recalling their collaboration on a sumptuous new version of “Midnight Blue,” Manchester says, “The experience was unbelievable. Her voice is so special, and the way she sings intervals is quite unique. I actually had to redo my own vocals, because I wanted to meet her emotionally. I thought this version of the song should be between two women, and Dolly was perfect.”
Until recently, fans were only able to hear “Confide in Me” (which Manchester wrote with Stan Schwartz) on versions by Diana Ross – and by Raquel Welch on The Muppets. On RE:VIEW, she reclaims the number, turning the torch song into a gorgeous, Latin-tinged ballad. Accompanying the track is a beautifully rendered video that has quickly become Manchester’s number one clip of all time.
“Making RE:VIEW has been so illuminating and rewarding,” she says. “These are legacy songs that people have loved, and it’s very gratifying to see my fans experience them in a new way. It was a blessing to reinvent these songs and give people a different world I hadn’t thought of 40 or 50 years ago.”
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MORE ABOUT MELISSA MANCHESTER
In 1980, Melissa Manchester became the first recording artist in the history of the Academy Awards to have two nominated movie themes in a single year – “Through the Eyes of Love” from Ice Castles and “I’ll Never Say Goodbye” from The Promise - and to perform them both on the Oscar telecast. Manchester created the role of Maddy, the title character’s mother, on the NBC hit TV series Blossom. She was nominated for a GRAMMY for “Don’t Cry Out Loud” in 1980 and she won the GRAMMY Award for Best Female Vocalist in 1982 singing “You Should Hear How She Talks About You.” Manchester has celebrated her tenure as Artist In Residence at Citrus College with the release of her albums, You Gotta Love The Life, The Fellas - a tribute to the iconic male singers who set the platinum standard for pop music – and now, her golden anniversary offering, RE:VIEW. In 2021, Manchester was inducted into the Great American Songbook Foundation’s Hall of Fame and she is a recipient of the NARAS Board of Governors Award.
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