New York Festival Of Song Presents NYFOS Next: The Many Worlds Interpretation

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

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New York Festival Of Song Presents 
NYFOS Next: The Many Worlds Interpretation

Acclaimed Series for New Song Continues on 
November 16 at The Theater at 150W17TH

www.nyfos.org

October 14, 2025 (New York, NY) — New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, continues its annual NYFOS Next series with The Many Worlds Interpretation on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. at The Theater at 150W17TH. 

Nathaniel LaNasa has curated a program that takes playful aim at tellings and retellings of our self-narratives. Composer and pianist Michael Stephen Brown performs his own Love's Lives Lost together with soprano Susanna Phillips for the work’s New York premiere; plus Kimberly Osberg's wistful You, Us, Me, written for and performed here by tenor Benjamin Brecher mourns an “us” that never had room for “me”; and Sarah Gibson’s Breath’d back again remixes poems of Thomas Moore to unmoor stories of our own anguish in “endless space.” 

"Is it naive to expect that my life-story should match up snugly with everyone else's, like puzzle pieces?” Nathaniel LaNasa said. “I am always surprised to hear "the other side of the story." I have begun to wonder, are there as many worlds as there are people? These songs are full of reality-revisions, missed connections, and unlived possibilities; these composers have crafted ingenious musical language for the fractures and recombinations as memories are revised."

The NYFOS Next series concludes in June 2026, with NYFOS Next’s latest collaboration presenting a meditation on possibility and impossibility in The Same River Twice. The program features three world premieres of new songs by Luna Composition Lab alumni Elisa Johnson, Alicia Erlandson, and Devon Lee, commissioned by NYFOS and celebrating the tenth anniversary of Luna Lab’s founding. Soprano Jennifer Zetlan and mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra will work closely with these young composers on works written for their voices, and the program will be filled out by selections from Luna Lab’s roster of superstar mentors.

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.

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Concert Information:

NYFOS Next: The Many Worlds Interpretation
Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 3:00 p.m.
The Theater at 150W17TH | 150 W 17th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $25 general admission / $10 student tickets
Link: https://nyfos.org/nyfos-next/

Program:
Michael Stephen Brown - Love’s Lives Lost
Kimberly Osberg - You, Us, Me
Sarah Gibson - Breath’d back again

Artists:
Susanna Phillips, soprano
Benjamin Brecher, tenor
Michael Stephen Brown, piano
Nathaniel LaNasa, pianist and curator
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NYFOS Next: The Same River Twice
June 2026
The Theater at 150W17TH | 150 W 17th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $25 general admission / $10 student tickets
Link: https://nyfos.org/nyfos-next/

Program:
Three premieres of new songs by Luna Composition Lab fellows commissioned by NYFOS, alongside songs by Luna alums and mentors. 

Artists:
Jennifer Zetlan, soprano
Kelly Guerra, mezzo-soprano
Nathaniel LaNasa, pianist

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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 partners 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 Susanna Phillips
Soprano Susanna Phillips has established herself as one of today’s most sought-after musician. Career highlights include The Metropolitan Opera in over eleven roles, premiering Rose/Awakenings at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and performing the role of Stella/A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Renée Fleming. Ms. Phillips has also sung leading roles with Boston Baroque including Cleopatra/Giulio Cesare and the title role in Agrippina. Other opera house engagements include Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, Dallas Opera, and Gran Teatro del Liceu. Dedicated to symphonic works, she has collaborated with highly esteemed orchestras including Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and her native Huntsville Symphony. An avid chamber music collaborator, she has performed a tribute concert to Clara Schumann at the Library of Congress and has sung for Washington Performing Arts in a program co-curated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Prestigious awards include some of the world’s leading vocal competitions: The Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, The Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, and Operalia. She has also claimed the top honor at the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition and first prizes from the American Opera Society and Musicians Club of Women. She is an alumna of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center and holds both a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School.

Ms. Phillips’ 2024/25 Season includes engagements with Seattle Symphony, Musica Sacra, Oratorio Society of New York, Saint Louis Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and a tour with her chamber ensemble, SPA Trio.

About Michael Stephen Brown
Michael Stephen Brown is a composer and pianist hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.”

A 2025 MacDowell Fellow and 2024 Yaddo Artist, Composer-Pianist Michael Stephen Brown performs recitals and concertos worldwide and receives commissions from leading orchestras, performers and chamber music festivals. Winner of the Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras such as the Seattle Symphony and NFM Leopoldinum, and in recitals at venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Louvre, Wigmore Hall, and Beethoven-Haus Bonn. He is currently composing THE MAGICAL CARNIVAL, a large-scale chamber ensemble work co-commissioned by four organizations premiering in 2026. A frequent artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brown tours internationally in a duo with his longtime musical partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and collaborates regularly with violinists Pinchas Zukerman and Arnaud Sussmann. A passionate educator, he regularly gives lectures and masterclasses worldwide.

Brown’s compositions have been commissioned by leading organizations and artists, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Bridgehampton and Gilmore festivals, the Maryland Symphony, Osmo Vänskä and Erin Keefe, the SPA Trio, and pianists Anne-Marie McDermott, Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich, soprano Susanna Phillips, and cellist Nicholas Canellakis. Recently, he served as Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony and is a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award. His symphonic work, American Diaries, draws on words by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and excerpts from his grandfather’s World War II diary.

Selected by András Schiff to perform on an international recital tour, Brown made debuts at Zurich's Tonhalle and New York's 92nd Street Y. He regularly appears at major festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Saratoga, Caramoor, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise. A prolific recording artist, Connection, an album of his works featuring his Piano Concerto with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and Mendelssohn with premieres by Delphine von Schauroth are both slated for release in 2025.

A First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and a recipient of the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brown earned dual degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald, and composer Samuel Adler. Additional mentors have included George Perle, András Schiff, and Richard Goode. Brown is also an Artist Ambassador for Creatives Care, an organization helping artists access affordable mental healthcare.

A native New Yorker, Michael lives in New York City with his two nineteenth-century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria. Known for his engaging commentary on music and his colorful sock changes during intermission, audiences eagerly anticipate both his insights and his unique sense of style.

About Benjamin Brecher
Operatic and concert tenor Benjamin Brecher has earned acclaim for his vibrant artistry and versatility, having performed over 75 operatic roles and appeared with more than forty orchestras across some of the world’s most prestigious venues. Known for his expertise in the high-lying lyric tenor repertoire, Mr. Brecher brings both technical finesse and emotional depth to his performances.

A native of Toledo, Ohio, he grew up in a musically rich environment, attending symphonic and opera performances from an early age. He began his formal training as a classical guitarist at age eight, later studying trumpet, before turning to vocal performance. He earned degrees in voice from Bowling Green State University, New England Conservatory of Music, and completed advanced training at the Juilliard Opera Center.

Mr. Brecher made his professional debut with Opera Theatre of St. Louis in Colin Graham’s production of Billy Budd, launching a distinguished career in both the U.S. and abroad. He has performed fifteen roles with New York City Opera, and has appeared with companies including Rossini Opera Festival Pesaro, L’Opera de Nice, L’Opera De Montreal, Santa Fe Opera, Berkshire Opera, Arizona Opera, and at festivals such as Ravinia, where he has sung with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

A hallmark of his concert career is his celebrated program A Celtic Celebration, showcasing the great Irish tenor repertoire. First performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Jack Everly, the program has since been presented by over 40 symphonies across North America.

His concert and oratorio credits include Messiah, Carmina Burana, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and many other masterworks. He has also performed with orchestras at Carnegie Hall, featured in PBS broadcasts such as Ira Gershwin at 100 and The Music of Lerner and Loewe.

Benjamin Brecher’s discography spans fourteen recordings, including The Barber of Seville with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Bernstein’s Candide (recorded live in Rome), and the critically acclaimed Forgotten Liszt on MSR Classics with pianist Robert Koenig. His recent releases on MSR Classics include Three Centuries of Thomas Moore, featuring works by Britten, Berlioz, and the world premiere of Sarah Gibson’s Breathed Back Again.

Benjamin currently is a Professor of Music at University of California Santa Barbara as well as being on the voice faculty at University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music.

About New York Festival of Song
Now in its 38th 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 January of 2022, NYFOS Records issued its first album, From Rags to Riches, with Stephanie Blythe and William Burden. In January of 2025, they released their sixth album, Schubert/Beatles, with Theo Hoffman, Julia Bullock, Kunal Lahiri, and Mr. Blier. The new CD joins NYFOS Records’s burgeoning discography, alongside A Picnic Cantata (2022), the first stereo recording of a hidden gem by Paul Bowles and James Schuyler; Black & Blue (2023), the debut solo album of British-American tenor Joshua Blue collaborating with Steven Blier; 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 wide-ranging compilation drawn from over 20 years of archival material, including tracks featuring Michael Spyres, Justin Austin, and Bernarda Fink. 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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