Whenever Idina Menzel takes any stage on Long Island, she gets hit with a complicated mix of feelings and memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s emotional for me,\u201d says the Tony-winning Syosset native, who has starred both on Broadway and in the dreams of a generation of kids as the voice of Elsa in \u201cFrozen.\u201d \u201cBeing onstage, I\u2019m doing what I love. . . . I can see how far I\u2019ve come. But it also reminds me of people who weren\u2019t so nice to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I should bring my shrink with me onstage,\u201d she adds, laughing.<\/p>\n
But taking the stage at the renovated Nassau Coliseum will be extra special for Menzel, who remembers going to see U2 at the arena when she was in high school. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a really cool show,\u201d says Menzel, adding that she has been agonizing over what songs from her recent \u201cidina.\u201d (Warner Bros.) album to leave out of the set so that she can do crowd favorites such as \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d from \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cLet It Go\u201d from \u201cFrozen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose songs reflect where I\u2019m at in my life,\u201d Menzel says of new songs such as \u201cQueen of Swords\u201d and \u201cI Do,\u201d which she co-wrote. \u201cThey\u2019re relevant to me and they\u2019re new and exciting. They all flow together. There\u2019s some great grooves to break up some of the ballads. It\u2019s like taking people on a ride, and it\u2019s such a joyful, fun moment when I can walk out and be myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
And she has enjoyed getting to see how the new songs fit with some of her older material during tour rehearsals. \u201cIt all boils down to how it feels,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cYou get to see what are good songs to elongate the groove and which ones should end with a bang.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Menzel is developing a movie about \u201ca version of me who never got out of Long Island,\u201d recently got engaged to her \u201cRent\u201d co-star Aaron Lohr and, of course, has \u201cFrozen 2\u201d on the horizon, her mind is focused on the tour, which will run through September.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in my touring head and trying to figure out how to bring my son [7-year-old Walker] on tour with us and have some other mommy friends come along with us so he\u2019s surrounded with kids and not just crazy musicians,\u201d says Menzel, laughing. \u201cHe\u2019s excited. Touring is a new thing for him. He digs it. He can\u2019t wait to show his friends the bunk beds on the bus and he wants to sell merch. . . . It\u2019s the next phase of the touring adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Idina Menzel says she\u2019s thrilled to be following Billy Joel so soon after he christens the Nassau Coliseum stage. \u201cHe is such a part of my entire childhood,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cI had a boyfriend who lived kind of close to him and we\u2019d drive in the middle of the night and try to find the gate of his house. Then we would park in front of his house \u2014 or what we thought was his house, it was probably some random neighbor \u2014 and play Billy Joel music and make out. The whole thing is . . . it\u2019s just beautiful. It really brings it home for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whenever Idina Menzel takes any stage on Long Island, she gets hit with a complicated mix of feelings and memories. \u201cIt\u2019s emotional for me,\u201d says the Tony-winning Syosset native, who has starred both on Broadway and in the dreams of a generation of kids as the voice of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-45"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-bL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}