New York Festival Of Song Presents 'A Space to Make' at Rubin Museum of Art on November 3

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New York Festival Of Song Presents A Space to
Make at Rubin Museum of Art on November 3

Featuring Soprano Robin Steitz, Mezzo-soprano
Theo Hayes, and Baritone Gregory Feldmann as Part of 
15th Annual NYFOS Next Festival 

Festival Kicks Off with Learning, Fast and Slow at Rubin
Museum of Art on September 29

www.nyfos.org

New York, NY (September 25, 2024) — New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, concludes the 15th annual NYFOS Next Festival with a program titled A Space to Make on Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. at the Rubin Museum of Art. 

Soprano Robin Steitz and mezzo-soprano Theo Hayes come together with baritone Gregory Feldmann and NYFOS Next curator, Nathaniel LaNasa to perform a program that traces the ways we create our spaces and the ways they create us.

Feldmann and LaNasa investigate monuments and landmarks in music in the world premiere of Iván Rodriguez’s Mother of Exiles, a towering rhapsody on Emma Lazaruz’s “The New Colossus.” Isabella Gellis’s exquisite settings of three folk songs from different cultures in Montreal give that city a sensitive musical portrait, providing a deeper look into overlapping spaces in Montreal Songs. Hannah Kendall’s Rosalind, with poetry by Sabrina Mahfouz, shows Shakespeare’s heroine Rosalind carving out a place for an identity chosen, not bestowed. Also on the program is Joseph Rubinstein’s Uncoil along with additional songs to be announced.

The NYFOS Next Festival kicks off on Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. at the Rubin Museum of Art with a program titled Learning, Fast and Slow. The concert features soprano Britt Hewitt and mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert, with Steven Palacio on bassoon and Nathaniel LaNasa on piano performing works by Kamala Sankaram and LJ White, including White’s recent Music Library Love Song for soprano and piano, and the world premiere of Timo Andres’s On My Fortieth Birthday.  

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.

The NYFOS Mainstage and the NYFOS Next series are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Concert Information
NYFOS Next Series at the Rubin Museum of Art - A Space to Make
Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 3:00 p.m.
Rubin Museum of Art | 150 W 17th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: Subscriptions to the 2-concert series: $40; Single Tickets: $25; student tickets $10
Link: https://nyfos.org/nyfos-next/

Program:
Joseph Rubinstein - Uncoil (2023)
Iván Rodriguez - Mother of Exiles (2020) *World Premiere
Isabella Gellis - Montreal Songs (2021)
Hannah Kendall - Rosalind (2020)
Additional songs to be announced

Artists:
Robin Steitz, soprano
Theo Hayes, mezzo-soprano
Gregory Feldmann, baritone
Nathaniel LaNasa, piano

About Nathaniel LaNasa
Pianist, actor, and artist Nathaniel LaNasa lives at the intersection of song, story, and image. He has performed in the sculpture garden at MoMA (New York), in front of his favorite paintings at the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), and at Wigmore Hall (London). 

In May 2023 he debuted Memory Prosthetic, a recital/exhibition which explores the mechanics and aesthetics of music notation by re-notating Bach’s Goldberg Variations as a series of graphic scores, which are projected during live performance. In April, he opened his first solo exhibition of paintings in Manhasset. In March, he originated the role of Mel and served as music director for Bryce McClendon’s new play, The Smallest Sound in the Smallest Space, off-Broadway in New York. 

A consummate collaborator, he has been praised for his “stormy lyricism” (The New York Times) and his “poise and elegance” (Feast of Music). In October 2022, Nate took charge of New York Festival of Song’s new music series, NYFOS Next, presenting recitals of songs by living composers at the Rubin Museum. Earlier in 2022, he served as assistant music director and first pianist for Ricky Ian Gordon’s new opera for two pianos, Intimate Apparel. He performed the work sixty times at Lincoln Center Theater, as well as on national television for PBS Great Performances. 

Nate and baritone Gregory Feldmann made their sold-out Carnegie Hall debut in February 2020. They have since performed together at Royaumont, the Kaufman Center, and on live radio for France Musique. Nate has also partnered extensively with vocalist Lucy Dhegrae; they have performed together as part of the Resonant Bodies Festival and at the American Music Festival (Albany Symphony). Nate has premiered works for quarter-tone pianos by Dimitri Tymoczko at Princeton University, made first recordings of chamber works by Tobias Picker for Tzadik, and workshopped Han Lash’s opera Desire at Columbia’s Miller Theater. Nate is a graduate of the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music.

About Robin Steitz
Robin Steitz is a Burmese-American soprano from Washington, DC who has established herself in both contemporary and classical spaces as a sensitive and versatile performing artist.  Highlights from recent seasons include performances of ‘Flora’ in Turn of the Screw (Opera Baltimore); ‘Susanna’ in Le Nozze di Figaro (OperaDelaware); ‘Papagena’ in Die Zauberflöte (Northern Lights Music Festival); and ‘Giulia’ in Rossini’s La scala di seta (Opera Southwest). She was a Voice Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2018-19, where she most notably appeared as the ‘Cricket’ in the American premiere of Richard Ayres’ opera The Cricket Recovers, conducted by Thomas Adès. This season, Robin premiered John Andrew Wilhite-Hannisdal’s chamber work Bristol Silence at the Motvind Jazz Festival in Oslo, Norway, and looks forward to singing the premiere of Matthew Rickett’s complete Swallow Songs with Piano Lunaire in October.

About Theo Hayes
Theo Hayes (they/them) is a mezzo-soprano in the Graduate Diploma program at The Juilliard School studying under Darrell Babidge. Hayes graduated from University of Connecticut in 2015 with a B.M. in vocal performance, studying under Meredith Ziegler. Hayes won first place in the National NATS competition for Treble Advanced Voice; was a district competitor in the Laffont Competition; and attended the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory (summer of 2023) while studying with Dr. Ho Eui Holly Bewlay in Buffalo, NY. In the Fall of 2023 at the Juilliard School, Theo sang the role Thelma in Later The Same Evening by Musto, and covered Annio in La Clemenza di Tito. In the summer of 2024, Theo sang excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Timothy Muffit. This season at The Juilliard School, Theo will be singing Despina in Così fan tutte; L’enfant in L’enfant et less sortileges; and covering Madame Croissy in Dialogues des Carmélites. Hayes is passionate about trans and non-binary representation in opera and is currently directing and performing in an operatic film project entitled Pants Role Project: Transforming Tradition, which centers the voices of queer and trans opera singers.

About Gregory Feldmann
Hailed for his "fresh and resonant voice" (Seen and Heard International), baritone Gregory Feldmann is a rising artist on opera and recital stages alike. He is currently a member of the 2023-24 International Opera Studio of Opernhaus Zürich, where he will appear in Verdí’s Macbeth, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

A passionate recitalist, Feldmann enjoys a "luminous” collaboration with pianist Nathaniel LaNasa (Oberon's Grove). The duo have given recitals in venues worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Royaumont Abbey, and the Musée d’Orsay. Their recent project American Icons explores the experiences of people living in the shadows of national monuments and myths, and has featured commissions from composers Shawn Chang, Molly Joyce, Matthew Ricketts, and Jorell Williams. He made his Zürich recital debut with Elaine Fukunaga and Klassifest last June, presenting Time as enemy, time as friend, a lyrical reflection on one’s relationship to time’s movement with songs by Korngold, Ginastera, Poulenc, and more.

About New York Festival of Song
Now in its 37th 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.

Their latest endeavor is NYFOS Records, which released its first album (From Rags to Riches, with Stephanie Blythe and William Burden) in January of 2022. Since then, NYFOS Records has released Paul Bowles’s A Picnic Cantata (2022) featuring the vocal talent of sopranos Amy Owens and Chelsea Shephard, mezzo-sopranos Amanda Lynn Bottoms and Naomi Louisa O’Connell, and percussionist Barry Centanni, together with NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier and co-founder Michael Barrett on piano; Black & Blue (2023), the debut solo album of British-American tenor Joshua Blue performing together with Steven Blier on piano; Mi País: Songs of Argentina (2023) featuring bass-baritone Federico De Michelis and pianist and Steven Blier; and NYFOS Records: The Singles, Vol. 1 (2024), a compilation of guest artists performing together with Steven Blier, spanning over 20 years of memorable moments and voices. NYFOS Records has reached rapidly growing audiences in over 100 countries, with well over 2.5 million streams to date. 

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, the Ann Goodman Recital Hall at Kaufman Music Center, and now the Rubin Museum in Chelsea.

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 17th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 17th year in March 2025); 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 150 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 Michael Spyres, 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  Julia Bullock, Stephanie Blythe, Sasha Cooke, Paul Appleby, Dina Kuznetsova, Corinne Winters, 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, and Canción amorosa, a CD of Spanish songs with soprano Corinne Winters. His latest releases for NYFOS Records include Black & Blue (2023), with British-American tenor Joshua Blue; Mi País: Songs of Argentina (2023) with bass-baritone Federico De Michelis; and NYFOS Records: The Singles, Vol. 1 (2024), a compilation of guest artists performing together with Steven Blier, spanning over 20 years of memorable moments and voices.

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. Mr. Blier is a Yamaha Artist.

Images at top of release provided by the artists

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