Ward re-imagines Sondheim songs in indie-folk collection
It was 2019 and aspiring Broadway actor Eleri Ward had Stephen Sondheim’s “Every Day a Little Death” stuck in her head.
“I would see friends at auditions and whatnot, and having been awake since like 4 or 5 a.m., they’d ask me how I’m doing,” she said. “And I responded with, ‘Oh, every day a little death.’ I was saying it as a stupid joke.”
She decided to record an acoustic rendition in her New York apartment’s living room and posted the video to Instagram on a Friday afternoon that March.
That simple post, amassing 120 likes, would lead to a recording contract, a job as the opening act for Josh Groban on tour last summer and the recent release of her second indiefolk album of Sondheim covers, “Keep a Tender Distance,” on Ghostlight Records.
“She’s completely unafraid of exploring the darkness of loneliness, as Sondheim does as well,” said two-time Tony winner
Donna Murphy. “She’s a fully present human in expressing both through her music and through what she shares in conversation with her audiences about what’s painful about being human.”
After the initial Instagram post, sung in a style inspired by Sufjan Stevens,
Ward’s friend pushed her to explore more from Sondheim.
“So the very next day I came up with ‘Johanna (Reprise),’ ” Ward said. During the pandemic, Ward and her boyfriend put the contents of their New York apartment in storage and moved to
Boston. By January 2021, she was posting her Sondheim videos to TikTok, at the suggestion of another friend.
“People really responded to them, wanted me to release these covers on streaming services,” Ward recalled. “So I said, ‘OK, I know how to record guitar and vocals and keyboard.’ ... We had a walk-in closet in this apartment in Boston, and I started recording what I had already created and editing and creating new things along the way.”
She made a TikTok asking Broadway World to write about her album, and the website subsequently ran a Q&A. Kurt Deutsch, founder of Ghostlight Records and a senior vice president of Warner Music Entertainment & Theatrical Ventures, read that story, searched online, discovered “Johanna (Reprise)” and messaged Ward on Instagram.
“I had never really heard Sondheim done in that way,” Deutsch said. “I found her music just glorious, and I said, ‘Do you have more?’ ”
Ward’s debut album of acoustic Sondheim covers, “A Perfect Little Death,” was recorded in the closet of the Boston apartment and released by Ghostlight on Oct. 1, 2021.
For her second album, she was afforded 11 sessions last year in New York City and got to lay down her own backing vocals. The recording was initially issued digitally in September. She’s in the midst of a solo tour with dates all over the country.
Ward, 28, grew up in the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge, Illinois, her mother an interior designer and real estate broker and her father a consultant. She started piano lessons at age 5 and remembers seeing Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” at the suburban Drury Lane Theatre.
She picked up a guitar in 2016 only because a friend was selling hers for $40.
“It totally opened a whole new voice for me artistically,” Ward said. “I was writing completely different music on guitar, and I just sort of fell in love with it.”
After a show in New
York last March, Ward was introduced to Rick Pappas, Sondheim’s lawyer.
“Rick says, ‘I want you to know that Sondheim loved your album and loved that you were doing something he never imagined with his music and bringing it to new audiences,’ ” Ward said. “… It was just the most amazing moment and such validation that I just never thought I was going to get.”