New York Festival of Song Releases New Single feat. Theo Hoffman & Announces New Album, 'Schubert/Beatles'

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

NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF
SONG RELEASES FIRST
SINGLE FROM NEW ALBUM
Schubert/Beatles

Single, Schubert’s
Du bist die Ruh, D776,
Featuring Baritone
Theo Hoffman with Guitarist
Rupert Boyd, Out Today

Stream the First Single Here

Full Album Out January 31, 2025
on NYFOS Records

Pre-order Link
nyfosrecords.limitedrun.com 

nyfos.org/nyfosrecords

October 18, 2024 (New York, NY) — Today, New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) releases the first single, Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh, D776, from its forthcoming new album, Schubert/Beatles, on NYFOS Records.

The single, Du bist die Ruh, features baritone Theo Hoffman with guitarist Rupert Boyd. The album, to be released on January 31, 2025, features Hoffman, pianists Steven Blier and Kunal Lahiry, and special guests soprano Julia Bullock and tenor Andrew Owens.

Hoffman and Blier first introduced their highly successful Schubert/Beatles program to NYFOS audiences in NYC eight years ago. The playlist pairs Schubert songs with Beatles songs on similar themes – or as Blier puts it, “the Holy of Holies snuggles up to the Oldie of Oldies.” On the complete album, the guitar-accompanied Schubert song links with George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” sung by Julia Bullock and Theo Hoffman. 

“We are so excited to bring you a first glimpse of this unique and inventive album,” said Theo Hoffman. “Schubert's famous Du bist die Ruh, masterfully arranged and performed by guitarist Rupert Boyd, acts as the nucleus of the CD, bringing these prolific masters of song closer together. In both the recording studio and the concert hall, this song often gets put on a pedestal as an overly precious specimen of ‘Heilige Kunst.’ In my mind, performing it with guitar (instead of the original piano) is the perfect way to remind the listener of what this truly is — a beautiful song of the early Romantic period meant to be enjoyed by everyone, not just art song fans.”

Schubert/Beatles will be released January 31, 2025 on NYFOS Records. Additional repertoire on the new album partners iconic Beatles favorites such as The Word, Julia, Taxman, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Schubert Lieder, including An Schwager Kronos and Im Frühling, emphasizing the similarities and the genius of two distinct voices in songwriting over a century apart. “They might at first seem like an odd couple – but oh, what a beautiful marriage,” concludes Steven Blier about the musical pairing.

The single and album are produced by Blier and Jonathan Estabrooks, with mixing by Estabrooks and mastering by Alan Silverman.

This album was funded in part by a generous gift from Eileen Caulfield Schwab, in recognition of the featured Terrance W. Schwab Vocal Rising Stars program alumni: Julia Bullock, Theo Hoffman, and Andrew Owens.

About Theo Hoffman
Hailed as “vocally towering,” baritone Theo Hoffman is among the most versatile American singers of his generation. Born and raised in Manhattan, Mr. Hoffman’s performing career has taken him all over the world, including collaborations with The Metropolitan Opera (Grounded), Staatsoper Hamburg (Il Turco in Italia and Manon), Opernhaus Zürich (Platée), Los Angeles Opera (Die Zauberflöte, Satyagraha, Candide, Carmen, et al), Seattle Opera (La Bohème), Opera Philadelphia (Denis & Katya), Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (The Trial and Le nozze di Figaro), Israeli Opera (Die Zauberflöte and Le nozze di Figaro), National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan (Pelléas et Mélisande), New Orleans Opera (Le nozze di Figaro), North Carolina Opera (Le nozze di Figaro), Atlanta Opera (La Bohème and Carmen), Opera Omaha (Les Enfants Terribles), Berkshire Opera Festival (Three Decembers), and Des Moines Metro Opera (Flight). Equally passionate about concert and recital, he spent three summers at Marlboro Music Festival, and has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Israeli Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Salzburg Mozartwoche, Vocal Arts DC, Bard Music Festival, Washington Concert Opera, Moab Music Festival, Portland Symphony Orchestra, and Winston-Salem Symphony. Mr. Hoffman has a long performing history with New York Festival of Song, and serves on their Artist Council. He is the recipient of a 2018 Richard Tucker Music Foundation Sara Tucker Study Grant and was a Grand Finalist in the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied under the great Sanford Sylvan, to whom he dedicates this debut album. Theo also dedicates this album to his mother, Susan Rosenfeld, who introduced him to the Beatles. 

About Rupert Boyd
At the age of 22, Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd left Australia for the first time, bound for New York City with just a suitcase and a guitar, and not knowing a single person in North America. He has subsequently become regarded as one of the finest guitarists of his generation, having been described by Gramophone as “a very fine musician” and by The Washington Post as “truly evocative”, and has performed across four continents, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to festivals in Europe, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia.

Recent concert highlights include performances for the Moab Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Caramoor, Strathmore, Festival Napa Valley, the Austin and Cleveland Classical Guitar Societies, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was also recently named New Artist of the Month in Musical America for his work as a performer and curator.

Active as both a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert Boyd regularly performs throughout the world in Boyd Meets Girl, with cellist Laura Metcalf, and the Australian Guitar Duo with guitarist Jacob Cordover. Boyd Meets Girl’s debut album reached #3 on the Billboard charts, has to date received over 4 million streams on Spotify, and received the following review in Gramophone Magazine: “they play like one, with a harmony of purpose as sure as their intonation.” Their follow-up album, Songs of Love & Despair, released in 2022 was also praised by Gramophone as “beguiling… fascinating… enchanting”. In 2024, Boyd Meets Girl gave the world premiere performances of ANAHATA, a cello and guitar double concerto composed by the Grammy-nominated Clarice Assad, and commissioned for the duo by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. The Australian Guitar Duo’s debut album Songs from the Forest was described as “wonderfully entertaining” by Classical Guitar Magazine.

Rupert Boyd also has three solo albums, with his most recent, The Guitar, being described as “an utterly exceptional recording” by Classical Guitar Magazine, and “a must-have album of 2019” by This Is Classical Guitar. Fantasías was selected by American Record Guide as “Critic’s Choice” of 2016, and Soundboard described the eponymous work on Boyd’s debut recording Valses Poéticos as “one of the best recorded performances of this work on guitar.” Rupert Boyd also recorded music for an episode of the wildly popular podcast Radiolab.

Rupert Boyd holds a Bachelor of Music (First Class Honours) from the Australian National University School of Music, a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, and an Artist Diploma from the Yale University School of Music. His major teachers have been Timothy Kain, David Leisner, and Benjamin Verdery. In addition to winning the Andrés Segovia award from the Manhattan School of Music, Rupert Boyd was also a winner of the Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition and winner of the Eisenberg-Fried Concerto Competition.

Rupert Boyd exclusively plays on D’Addario Strings and lives in New York City, where he is co-artistic director of GatherNYC, a revolutionary Sunday morning concert series at the Museum of Arts and Design.

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 160 vocal recitals with repertoire spanning the entire range of American song, art song from Schubert to Szymanowski, and popular song from early vaudeville to the present day. NYFOS has also made in-depth explorations of music from Spain, Latin America, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Russia, with excursions into the music of Greece, Lebanon, and Israel. New York Magazine gave NYFOS its award for Best Classical Programming, while Opera News proclaimed Blier “the coolest dude in town.” 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, Corinne Winters, Will Liverman, 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; 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 are Mi País: Songs of Argentina with baritone Federico De Michelis, and NYFOS Records, The Singles Volume 1, featuring performances by Michael Spyres, Bernarda Fink, and many others, both on NYFOS Records. 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. Mr. Blier is a Yamaha Artist.

About New York Festival of Song
Now in its 36th 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 been a hotbed for 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 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. Other albums include a CD of Argentinean song with Metropolitan Opera basso Federico de Michelis (Mi país) and Black and Blue with another Met headliner, Joshua Blue. They also issue a monthly single, with archival performances by artists such as Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Bernarda Fink, and newly recorded songs by Joshua Blue and Sasha Cooke. NYFOS Records has reached rapidly growing audiences in over 100 countries, with well over two million streams since the beginning of the year. 

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 programs 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 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 (since 2013).

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.

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