TORONTO – Nearly two decades after launching his concert career, Mandy Patinkin is off to a fresh start.

The “Homeland” star is touring with “Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Dress Casual,” with a two-night stand at the Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto slated for June 15 and 16.

As the acclaimed performer sings standards from the catalogues of composers like Irving Berlin and Stephen Sondheim, Patinkin has new company onstage with Adam Ben-David on piano.

Ben-David has been active as an arranger, music director, conductor and pianist on Broadway for the past 20 years, with credits including “The Book of Mormon,” “Jersey Boys” and “Spring Awakening.”

He replaces Patinkin’s longtime piano player Paul Ford, with whom the Tony winner worked for 30 years before his retirement.

“Paul and I have begun teaching Adam the 13, 14 hours of material we’ve developed over the years,” said the New York-based Patinkin.

“Now, I have a whole new part of my life to explore the music with his artistry and then to bring it all over the world. We’re just getting out of the gate.”

Reached at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, Patinkin spoke about his love of the standards and why he tries to avoid U.S. election talk.

The Canadian Press: You talk about these songs as being a comfort to you. With “Dress Casual,” are there particular ones you really love or that stick close to you for a particular reason?

Mandy Patinkin: There are just so many. I would say Sondheim is someone that really talks to me in a deep way.

I keep changing the song list because if I sing this song today, then I want to do something else tomorrow because it’s an embarrassment of riches in terms of the reservoir of material that exists.

Some ideas are just about having fun. Some are about being silly. Some are about talking to your kid. Some are about talking to the world around you. “How do you just wake up and exist? How do you turn darkness into light? How do you celebrate life? How do you take a risk? How do you live?” And the beauty of this material is there’s something that speaks to all of it.

Then, just the current events of our lives each day inform what material I’m going to choose that night. I’ll make the song list up for that night, and sometimes in the middle of the show, I just start changing.

CP: Is there anything you see in contemporary music that has you really excited?

Patinkin: I love a lot of classical music, I love country and western music, I love show tunes. But I also sing a lot of stuff that isn’t show tunes, like Randy Newman songs and Tom Waits and Paul Simon — guys like that that just tell great, great stories. I like any song that has an amazing story, whether it’s complicated or simple, whether it’s funny or serious.

And I twist songs. Sometimes I’ll turn a song into a statement about greed or the economy or demagogues or anything that’s going on. There’s some of the songs I sing and it’s like: “Is he singing an old song, or is he singing a song about the presidential election in America?”

CP: What do you make of how everything is unfolding during the U.S. election campaign?

Patinkin: I’m actually in the concert world right now trying not to discuss it on stage, nor do I want to talk about it during these interviews at the moment. I’m trying to create a space for me to get away from all of this “insanity” is how I describe it, in one word, and for the audience to get away.

I’m quite taken by how so much of these classic words, songs, reflect the world we’re living in and what’s going on around us on a million levels. And I think they have a greater power if I don’t say certain people’s names or point it out or hit it on the nose.

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Note: This interview has been edited and condensed.

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