Laura Foley

The sound of a lonely saxophone, the melancholy patter of midnight rain, the velvet black of a city at night… and one perfect lonely chanteuse in a strapless gown… there’s one word for it: Noir. Its music is essential to the Noir mystique, in vibrating circles of moody inspiration. Now, Melissa Errico, building on the triumph of her 2020 New York concert series devoted to “Mystery and Desire,” offers Feinstein’s/54 Below another unique & intriguing program — one of Noir songs, ranging from forties movie music (David Raksin’s “Laura”) to contemporary extensions of the sensibility, with new songs by Patricia Barber and David Shire. Noir is a French conception, too, and so Out of The Dark looks to songs in French by Barbra, a world premiere song by Michel Legrand; and even a bilingual lament by Adam Gopnik and the late Peter Foley, a beloved friend of Melissa’s. Also: “The Man That Got Away,” “Blame It On My Youth,” and a playful Harry Warren gem “Checkin’ My Heart.”

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, with all the world locked away in lonely rooms and only old movies to watch at midnight, singer and author Melissa Errico suddenly returned to one of her life-long obsessions – noir! That dark, disturbing sensibility of intractable fatalism that Paris existentialists discovered in American film in the nineteen forties, and that runs as a mesmerizing, mysterious current through modern movies and modern music alike.

A 16 year old girl takes up with a charming young man who quickly shows his colors when he beats a friend simply for walking with her and then goes totally ballistic after she tries to break up with him.

A 16 year old girl takes up with a charming young man who quickly shows his colors when he beats a friend simply for walking with her and then goes totally ballistic after she tries to break up with him.