12/6: New York Festival of Song Presents 'A Goyishe Christmas to You!' at Kaufman Music Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Katlyn Morahan
Morahan Arts and Media
katlyn@morahanartsandmedia.com
(646) 378-9386

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NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF SONG PRESENTS
A GOYISHE CHRISTMAS TO YOU!
AT KAUFMAN MUSIC CENTER ON DECEMBER 6

Featuring Donna Breitzer, Cantor Joshua Breitzer, Joshua Jeremiah,
Rebecca Jo Loeb, Alex Mansoori, Lauren Worsham, and Steven Blier
in Yuletide Tunes by Jewish Composers

“insightful and imaginative, touching and funny” —The New York Times

www.nyfos.org

October 28, 2021, New York, NY — New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, presents its annual holiday tradition, A Goyishe Christmas to You! on Monday, December 6, 2021 at 7:00pm at Merkin Hall’s Upper Lobby at the Kaufman Music Center. The program features favorite Yuletide tunes by Jewish composers, performed with a twist, sung by mezzo-soprano Donna Breitzer, Cantor Joshua Breitzer, baritone Joshua Jeremiah, mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb, tenor Alex Mansoori, and soprano Lauren Worsham. Steven Blier joins as pianist and host together with clarinetist Alan R. Kay.

An instant classic, the program—devised and premiered by Steven Blier at HENRY’s in 2010 and now in its twelfth incarnation—consists of Yuletide songs, from the wickedly funny to the meltingly beautiful, entirely written by Jewish composers. From such tunes as Frank Loesser’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside” to Jay Livingston and Ray Evans’ “Silver Bells,” the popular seasonal songbook is packed with countless contributions by Jewish songwriters on behalf of their gentile counterparts.

Single tickets priced at $40 are on-sale at http://nyfos.org/21-22season.

NYFOS’ 2021-22 season also includes its four Mainstage series concerts held at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, including And...We’re Back! on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 at 8:00pm with Paul Appleby, Amanda Lynn Bottoms, Rebecca Jo Loeb, Johnathan McCullough, and Maggie Reneé; Buenos Aires, Then and Now on Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 8:00pm with Nicoletta Berry, Raquel González, Brian James Myer and pianist Joseph Li; Love Songs in 176 Keys: 4 hands, 4 voices, 4 countries on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 8:00pm with Caramoor’s 2022 Vocal Rising Stars; and The Wider View: Songs by Black Composers on Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 8:00pm with Aundi Marie Moore, Lucia Bradford, and others to be announced.

All NYFOS programming is funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

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Concert Information
A Goyishe Christmas to You!
Monday, December 6, 2021 at 7:00pm
Upper Lobby at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center
Tickets: $40 available at nyfos.org

Donna Breitzer, mezzo-soprano
Cantor Joshua Breitzer
Joshua Jeremiah, baritone
Rebecca Jo Loeb, mezzo-soprano
Alex Mansoori, tenor
Lauren Worsham, soprano
Steven Blier, pianist and host
Alan R. Kay, clarinet

HOWARD LEVITSKY/MARC MILLER: Candle in My Window
FRANK LOESSER: Baby, It’s Cold Outside
DAVID JAVERBAUM/ADAM SCHLESINGER: Can I interest you in Hanukkah?
FELIX BERNARD/DICK SMITH: Winter Wonderland
JAY LIVINGSTON/RAY EVANS: Silver Bells
JOHNNY MARKS: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Yiddish arr. by Kugelplex/Joshua Breitzer)
FRANK LOESSER: What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
JOAN JAVITS/PHIL and TONY SPRINGER/R.J. LOEB: Santa Zaydee
ROY ZIMMERMAN: Don’t Let Gramma Cook Christmas Dinner
MEL TORMÉ/TORMÉ and WELLS: The Christmas Song (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) (new lyrics by Adam Gopnik)
DAVID FRIEDMAN: My Simple Christmas Wish
IRVING BERLIN: White Christmas
JOHNNY MARKS: Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

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About New York Festival of Song
Now in its 34th season, New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) is dedicated to creating intimate song concerts of great beauty and originality. Weaving music, poetry, history and humor into evenings of compelling theater, NYFOS fosters community among artists and audiences. Each program entertains and educates in equal measure.

Founded by pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier in 1988, NYFOS continues to produce its series of thematic song programs, drawing together rarely-heard songs of all kinds, overriding traditional distinctions between musical genres, exploring the character and language of other cultures, and the personal voices of song composers and lyricists.

Since its founding, NYFOS has particularly celebrated American song. Among the many highlights is the double bill of one-act comic operas, Bastianello and Lucrezia, by John Musto and William Bolcom, both with libretti by Mark Campbell, commissioned and premiered by NYFOS in 2008 and recorded on Bridge Records. In addition to Bastianello and Lucrezia and the 2008 Bridge Records release of Spanish Love Songs with Joseph Kaiser and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, NYFOS has produced five recordings on the Koch label, including a Grammy Award-winning disc of Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles, and the Grammy-nominated recording of Ned Rorem’s Evidence of Things Not Seen (also a NYFOS commission) on New World Records. In 2014, Canción Amorosa, a CD of Spanish song—Basque, Catalan, Castilian, and Sephardic—was released on the GPR label, with soprano Corinne Winters accompanied by Steven Blier.

In November 2010, NYFOS debuted NYFOS Next, a mini-series for new songs, hosted by guest composers in intimate venues, including OPERA America's National Opera Center, National Sawdust, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, and now the Ann Goodman Recital Hall at Kaufman Music Center.

NYFOS is passionate about nurturing the artistry and careers of young singers, and has developed training residencies around the country, including with The Juilliard School’s Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts (now in its 16th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 14th year in March 2022); San Francisco Opera Center (over 20 years as of February 2018); Glimmerglass Opera (2008–2010); and its newest project, NYFOS@North Fork in Orient, NY.

NYFOS’s concert series, touring programs, radio broadcasts, recordings, and educational activities continue to spark new interest in the creative possibilities of the song program, and have inspired the creation of thematic vocal series around the world.

About Steven Blier
Steven Blier is the Artistic Director of the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), which he co-founded in 1988 with Michael Barrett. Since the Festival’s inception, he has programmed, performed, translated and annotated more than 140 vocal recitals with repertoire spanning the entire range of American song, art song from Schubert to Szymanowski, and popular song from early vaudeville to Lennon-McCartney. NYFOS has also made in-depth explorations of music from Spain, Latin America, Scandinavia and Russia. New York Magazine gave NYFOS its award for Best Classical Programming, while Opera News proclaimed Blier “the coolest dude in town” and in December 2014, Musical America included him as one of 30 top industry professionals in their feature article, “Profiles in Courage.”

Mr. Blier enjoys an eminent career as an accompanist and vocal coach. His recital partners have included Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Samuel Ramey, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Susan Graham, Jessye Norman, and José van Dam, in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to La Scala. He is also on the faculty of The Juilliard School and has been active in encouraging young recitalists at summer programs, including the Wolf Trap Opera Company, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, Santa Fe Opera, and the San Francisco Opera Center. Many of his former students, including Stephanie Blythe, Joseph Kaiser, Sasha Cooke, Paul Appleby, Dina Kuznetsova, Corinne Winters, Julia Bullock, and Kate Lindsey, have gone on to be valued recital colleagues and sought-after stars on the opera and concert stage. In keeping the traditions of American music alive, he has brought back to the stage many of the rarely heard songs of George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Kurt Weill and Cole Porter. He has also played ragtime, blues and stride piano evenings with John Musto. A champion of American art song, he has premiered works of John Corigliano, Paul Moravec, Ned Rorem, William Bolcom, Mark Adamo, John Musto, Richard Danielpour, Tobias Picker, Robert Beaser, Lowell Liebermann, Harold Meltzer, and Lee Hoiby, many of which were commissioned by NYFOS.

Mr. Blier’s extensive discography includes the premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles (Koch International), which won a Grammy Award; Spanish Love Songs (Bridge Records), recorded live at the Caramoor International Music Festival with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Joseph Kaiser, and Michael Barrett; the world premiere recording of Bastianello (John Musto) and Lucrezia (William Bolcom), a double bill of one-act comic operas set to librettos by Mark Campbell; and Quiet Please, an album of jazz standards with vocalist Darius de Haas. His latest release is Canción amorosa, a CD of Spanish songs with soprano Corinne Winters. His writings on opera have been featured in Opera News and the Yale Review. A native New Yorker, he received a Bachelor’s Degree with Honors in English Literature at Yale University, where he studied piano with Alexander Farkas. He completed his musical studies in New York with Martin Isepp and Paul Jacobs.

About Donna Breitzer
Brooklyn-based mezzo-soprano Donna Breitzer enjoys a varied schedule of solo and ensemble performances in New York City and beyond. Equally versatile in early music, contemporary works, art song, opera, and sacred music, Donna is an in-demand performer in both small and large ensemble settings. Recent performance highlights include appearances with the American Classical Orchestra, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and the Bard Festival Chorale/American Symphony Orchestra, as well as performances with New York Festival of Song's After Hours series, Berkshire Bach Society, and The Metropolitan Opera, where she has been a member of the Extra Chorus since 2014.

In addition to performing, Donna maintains a private voice teaching studio in New York City, and is the Executive Director of Five Boroughs Music Festival, which she co-founded in 2007. www.donnabreitzer.com.

About Cantor Joshua Breitzer
Cantor Joshua Breitzer is an Adjunct Instructor and Coach at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM). He also serves as cantor and music director of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn and is the founding conductor of HaZamir Brooklyn, a chapter of HaZamir: The International Jewish High School Choir.

A mid-Michigan native, Cantor Breitzer attended Interlochen Arts Camp and holds voice degrees from the University of Michigan and the New England Conservatory. Prior to receiving ordination at HUC-JIR in 2011 and eventually joining the adjunct faculty there, Cantor Breitzer presented a graduate thesis on the sacred vocal works of Jack Gottlieb, with whom he worked closely during the last months of the composer’s life.

Cantor Breitzer has performed throughout America and Israel and has taught under the auspices of many prestigious Jewish and secular music organizations. He makes a home with his wife Donna and young sons Jonah and Gideon in the Park Slope neighborhood.

About Joshua Jeremiah
Baritone Joshua Jeremiah was raised in Lebanon County, and is thrilled to be back in New York City making music in person! Recent stage performances include the role of Dunois in Tchaikovsky's Russian grand opera Maid of Orleans with Opera Company of Middlebury, and The Troubadour, a reduced and socially distanced version of Il Trovatore with Opera Tampa, where he sang the role of Il Conte di Luna.

Like many artists during the pandemic, Joshua frequently performed virtually and can be heard on the Experiments in Opera podcast Aqua Net & Funyuns. He also performed the role of Pangloss in a filmed version of Bernstein's Candide with Opera Company of Middlebury. Before the 2019-20 season came to an abrupt halt he performed Melchior in Amahl and the Night Visitors with On Site Opera, Lionel in The Maid of Orleans with New Orleans Opera, and made his house debut with Houston Grand Opera as Rigoletto.

Notable performances in recent seasons include: his house debut with Minnesota Opera as Horstmayer in Silent Night, Rigoletto with the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera, Scarpia in Tosca with the Reading Symphony, Silvio in Pagliacci with New Orleans Opera, The Man in Persona in his Los Angeles Opera debut, his On Site Opera debut as Aaron Greenspan in Ricky Ian Gordon's Morning Star, When Adonis Calls with Asheville Lyric Opera, Mata Hari with the PROTOTYPE Festival, Gianni Schicchi and Macbeth with the Opera Company of Middlebury, the title role in Rigoletto and Lassiter in the world-premiere of Riders of the Purple Sage with Arizona Opera, and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream with Hawaii Opera Theatre. www.joshuajeremiahbaritone.com.

About Rebecca Jo Loeb
Hailed as “a theatrical performer whose rise to watch” by Opera News, Rebecca Jo Loeb recently made debuts with the Teatro Municipal de Santiago reprising Gymnasiast/ein Groom in Lulu and with Theater Freiburg as Susan in Weill’s Love Life. Her other engagements include her return to the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Zweite Magd in Elektra and New York Festival of Song for Arias and Barcarolles on tour to Arizona Opera and Wolf Trap. She made debuts with the Metropolitan Opera as Flora in La traviata and Oper Köln as The Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen.

In concert, Rebecca has performed with the Hamburg Ballet as the Alto in both Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St. Johannes Passion, with the CPE Bach Chor as the Alto Soloist in Bach’s Markus-Passion, and as a soloist in her concert series The Jenny and Johnny Project at both the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau and the Brecht Festival in Augsburg, Germany. She has joined James Conlon in a concert performance of Mahagonny Sonspiel at the Ravinia Festival and has sung Mendelssohn ´s Midsummer Night’s Dream with the New York City Ballet, the Alto and Second Soprano Soloist in Bach ´s Mass in B minor at Carnegie Hall, and made her Alice Tully Hall debut singing Bolcom ´s acclaimed Cabaret Songs with orchestra.

Her awards include a Sullivan Educational Award, the Curt Englehorn Scholarship from the Opera Foundation, first prize in the Lotte Lenya Competition, a 2009 Career Bridges grant, and the Ginney and John Starkey Young Artist Award at Central City Opera. She is a proud graduate of the Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music, and especially the University of Michigan, from which she received the Stanley Medal.

About Alex Mansoori
Called “Outstanding” and “Hilarious” by critics, tenor Alex Mansoori has been hailed as “solid and convincing” and “smartly characterized” by The New York Times. Specializing in character tenor roles, Mr. Mansoori’s varied repertoire runs the gamut from Handel and Mozart to Bernstein and Sondheim. Recent seasons included debuts with Dallas Opera (Falstaff), Tanglewood (Candide), Opera Tampa (Le Nozze di Figaro), and Opera Colorado (Falstaff). He also made returns to Opera Naples (Madama Butterfly), Ravinia Festival (Candide), Opera Orlando (Les Contes d'Hoffman, Pagliacci), Titusville Playhouse (Mamma Mia!), the New York Festival of Song (Blitzstein/Weill Double Bill). Future seasons include returns to Opera Tampa for L'Contes d'Hoffman and Opera Colorado.

About Lauren Worsham
Lauren Worsham is a Drama Desk Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated actor and singer. She originated the role of Phoebe on Broadway in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, for which she received a Drama Desk Award, a Theatre World Award, and a Tony Award nomination. Other favorite roles include Magnolia in Show Boat with the New York Philharmonic (also on PBS), Lisa in Dog Days at Montclair Peak Performances, Fort Worth Opera and LA Opera (dir. Robert Woodruff), Flora in Turn of the Screw at New York City Opera (dir. Sam Buntrock), Amy in Where's Charley at New York City Center (dir. John Doyle), Cunegonde in New York City Opera's Candide, and Olive in the first National tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Lauren co-wrote and starred in The Wildness at Ars Nova, nominated for a Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical. Additional credits include La Perichole at New York City Opera, Carnival (Lili) at Goodspeed Opera House, Into the Woods (Cinderella) at Kansas City Rep, Master Class (Sophie) at Paper Mill Playhouse, The Light in the Piazza (Clara) at Weston Playhouse and The Fantasticks (Luisa) at Emelin Theatre.

In addition to her work in theater and opera, Lauren is the lead singer for the rock band Sky-Pony (called "indie pop aces" by The New York Times). Lauren has performed in concert frequently, both with her band and solo, including shows at Carnegie Hall, Caramoor, Merkin Hall, Oregon Bach Festival, Mercury Lounge, Joe's Pub, The Park Avenue Armory and New York City Opera's VOX Program. Lauren was second-place award winner of the Kurt Weill Foundation's Lotte Lenya competition. She is the co-founder and executive director of the downtown opera company, The Coterie.

Lauren has appeared in the CW television show Valor, as well as the indie film Saint Janet. Lauren is also especially proud of her performance as the voice of the cousin-loving Urara in the English-language dub of the anime classic The Sakura Diaries. Lauren graduated cum laude from Yale University, with a B.A. in Spanish Literature. She is represented by Ted Schachter and Rachel Saltzman of Schachter Entertainment and Ben Sands of Artists & Representatives. www.laurenworsham.com.

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