Idina Menzel finds the right balance for tour visiting Pittsburgh

The last time she played Pittsburgh, Idina Menzel covered Radiohead, belted out Broadway tunes and got into the crowd for a sing-along with “Frozen”-loving little girls.

Expect more surprises and eclectic song picks Tuesday, when the Tony- and Grammy-winning Menzel returns to Pittsburgh, this time playing larger Heinz Hall, as part of a 50-city global tour.

Along with pop and musical theater favorites, Menzel will sing songs from her 2016 album, “idina.”

“Having some new music is very exciting for me,” Menzel said in a phone interview Thursday, sounding upbeat and relaxed while killing time in an airport terminal waiting to catch a flight to the East Coast.

This tour has a few new arrangements and new covers.

“We’ve tried to change it a bit to make it like a brand new show, without abandoning the songs and arrangements that people would expect,” Menzel said. “That can be a tricky little dance to do. But I think we’ve done it. It feels fresh and new but pays off for the audience. I think we struck a good balance.”

The tour began March 29 in Japan, though there have been intermittent breaks to spend time with her 7-year-old son, Walker, who loves visiting parks and playing basketball.

Menzel co-wrote nine of the 12 songs on the critically praised “idina.,” which she characterizes as the most personal and introspective of her five studio albums. Those songs took shape at a major juncture of her life, where her divorce to actor Taye Diggs had become final, as she was garnering the biggest success of her career as the full-throttled singer of the Oscar-winning, girl-power blockbuster “Let It Go” from the animated film “Frozen.”

Menzel said she didn’t feel nervous about releasing an album with such raw emotions and vulnerability.

“That’s the only way I know how to write — be as authentic and true as possible,” she said. “There were a lot of opposing forces going on in my life, with real professional success coming in a way I hadn’t seen before with “Frozen” and that song. So from the personal level that was a lot to write about. My goal was to dig deep and be honest with the music. You can’t be afraid to be vulnerable as an artist. That’s kind of an occupational hazard we all take on.”

The first finished album track, “I See You,” was sent to her and seemed tailor-fit for her mood at that moment. The chorus says, “Here’s to the lonely/To the broken-hearted/I want you to know I feel your pain.”

Menzel said, “I’m not saying there that I’m trying to save a bunch of people, but I am saying I know what you’re going through. I know how you feel.”

Another new song, “Queen of The Swords,” is pure female empowerment. Maybe it’s her modesty or self-deprecating humor, but Menzel wonders if that song reached the level of ire she had aimed for when writing it.

“I’ve tried to write a very vengeful, angry song but that’s not what comes out,” she said. “I’ve wanted to do that to get out my frustrations, but then my arrangers find a way to get the hope and the optimism out of me.”

That pesky optimism.

Her tour band features her usual rhythm section, and she customarily has hired 10 musicians from whatever city she’s playing to provide an orchestral feel.

“But for this tour I thought I needed to bring more female energy in, so I have two female string players who also sing, and a backup singer who also plays guitar,” Menzel said.

Menzel’s 2015 show at the Benedum Center found the Broadway star who originated the role of the witchy Elphaba in the smash-hit “Wicked” doing laid-back things, like kicking off her high heels and switching to Ninja Turtle slippers to stroll into the audience, handing the mic to several fans to take the lead vocals on “Take Me or Leave Me” from another of her hit musicals, “Rent.”

Though it’s obvious on the phone, someone seeing Menzel headline a concert for the first time might be surprised she is so down-to-earth and un-diva like. She’s comfortable enough in her skin to range her cover choices from Radiohead’s “Creep” to the Joni Mitchell-penned Judy Collins hit “Both Sides Now.”

“I don’t know, people who have supported me through the years have seen the pretty eclectic path I’ve taken musically,” Menzel said. “I guess some might say, ‘Wow, she’s singing Led Zeppelin, and now she’s singing some jazzy thing.’ That’s a testimony to my musicians and my arrangers.”

With her voice raising in a bit of girlish glee, she added, “and maybe that’s a little testimonial to me.”

Did someone say “Glee”?

Menzel broadened her fan base with a number of guest appearances on the Fox show “Glee” between 2010 and 2013, though her memories aren’t completely happy from that time.

“I had just had a baby, and I was feeling fat and old and they’re like ‘Hey, how would you like to play (star) Lea Michele’s mom?‘” Menzel said. “So I brought my baggage to the set. And when you’re a guest star you never really feel comfortable, because these people are together all the time and like a family, and I get that from being in ‘Rent’ and ‘Wicked.’”

Menzel said she didn’t anticipate “Rent” and “Wicked” would become such major forces on Broadway.

“You never know these things most of the time. You’re just an actor trying to get work,” she said.

Even after a Tony nomination for “Rent” and a Tony Award win for “Wicked,” she wasn’t able to just sit back and be choosy about the roles she was offered.

“I’m not Julia Roberts,” Menzel said.

Though she’s very proud of “Rent” and “Wicked” and holds fond memories of performing in both those shows.

“It’s fun for me to relive. I don’t get tired of those shows or of finding ways to celebrate them,” she said.

She’s always ready to celebrate “Frozen,” too, the highest-grossing animated film ever, for which she voiced the co-lead role of Queen Elsa and sang the humongous hit “Let It Go.”

“You get a good role in an animated movie, you take it,” Menzel said.

Menzel said she’s not sure if she can pinpoint the moment where she realized “Frozen” had become a cultural phenomenon.

“Maybe it was that first Halloween, when I saw a million moms walking around with little girls in blues dresses,” she said.

“It’s hard to tell, because it happens in so many increments. I remember they said you’re going to have to fly out to the Oscars to sing, and I was like really? Then you find out it has broken all these records. It was just unraveling these surprises all the time, and it felt great,” she said.

“This was the moment I had been looking for, where my theater and pop worlds found a way to merge together,” Menzel said.

They’ll merge again Tuesday in Pittsburgh, in a show certain to include “Let It Go” and songs from her biggest shows. But look out for some improvisations and spontaneity, too.

“I want each city to feel they got a show that was unique to them,” Menzel said. “Certain things can make it different. Maybe I’ll sing something melodically different, or I’ll be inspired to tell a story about the last time I was in that city, or about something that’s going on in my life. I’m not going to phone it in.”