New York Festival of Song announces 2019-2020 Season, from gay Harlem to rare Weill & Blitzstein protest pieces

NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF SONG
Steven Blier, Artistic Director • Michael Barrett, Associate Artistic Director
announces the
2019-20 Season

A year of astonishing variety and artistry
"No group in the city presents a more scintillating program of songs.”
— THE NEW YORKER

FOUR MAINSTAGE SHOWS AT MERKIN HALL:

Lyrics By Shakespeare
OCTOBER 16
A revival of NYFOS’ opening program (in 1988), exploring the Bard's
influence on classical composers from Quilter to Kabalevsky, and jazzmen
from Dankworth to Dick Hyman—along with readings that complement the songs.
Mezzo-soprano NAOMI LOUISA O’CONNELL, bass MATT BOEHLER,
actor KATHLEEN CHALFANT, pianist STEVEN BLIER

Marc Blitzstein’s No For An Answer
Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee (Silverlake)
NOVEMBER 19
Two powerful, neglected works by two masters of political theater.
Each of them speaks passionately to the issues of our times.
Adam Gopnik collaborates with Steven Blier on the evening's spoken continuity.
Soprano SARI GRUBER, mezzo-soprano REBECCA JO LOEB,
tenor ALEX MANSOORI, baritone JOHN BRANCY,
pianists MICHAEL BARRETT and STEVEN BLIER

Tain't Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs from Gay Harlem
DECEMBER 12
Music from Harlem’s gay underground.
Works by Bessie Smith, Billy Strayhorn, Porter Grainger
and songs popularized by Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters, and “Ma” Rainey.
Mezzo-soprano LUCIA BRADFORD, tenor JOSHUA BLUE,
baritone JUSTIN AUSTIN, pianists STEVEN BLIER and JOSEPH LI

The Art of Pleasure
MARCH 17
The beauties of the seaside, romance, and the spirit—and some guilty pleasures too.
Music by Montsalvatge, Rachmaninoff, Jonathan Dove, Tom Lehrer, The Kinks...
Featuring Caramoor’s 2020 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars.

 

Steven Blier talks about the new season:

“NYFOS’ fall season packs a lot into a few months: the profound elegance of Shakespeare, the fire of Kurt Weill and Marc Blitzstein, and the flamboyant swing of Harlem’s gay subculture. All three programs speak directly to the hot-button issues of our times, offering perspective, wisdom, and some much-needed joy. As for the singers and players, they are musical royalty. Come join us—we’re planning on raising the roof.”

 

NYFOS MAINSTAGE
Four concerts co-presented by Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center and New York Festival of Song
Merkin Hall, 129 West 67th Street
Complimentary wine receptions with the artists to follow each program.

$150-$240 Subscriptions for Entire Series
$20-$65 for Single Tickets; $10 for Student Tickets
Purchase tickets online at nyfos.org.

Lyrics By Shakespeare
Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
Naomi Louisa O’Connell, mezzo-soprano; Matt Boehler, bass
Kathleen Chalfant, actor; Steven Blier, piano

NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF SONG—the "engaging, ever-curious series" (The New York Times)—opens its 2019-2020 season by revisiting the very first program it ever presented, in 1988: Lyrics By Shakespeare. This highly popular program, which explores the Bard’s influence on music over the centuries, returned last August in a sold-out performance presented by Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival.

NYFOS brings back two singers who are not only refined vocalists, but also superb actors: mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O'Connell and bass Matt Boehler. Both are blessed with a theatrical imagination, and their chemistry with the great actress Kathleen Chalfant and pianist Steven Blier is magical.

Parterre's review of the August production praised Boehler as "a bass with an attitude and the goods to back it up" and O'Connell for her "full Kammersängerin cry" which "can sound a bit like, well, Kathleen Ferrier, actually… Heavy gold, deep and room-filling."

This 75-minute evening illuminates Shakespeare's classic poetry with musical settings by Berlioz, Dankworth, Kabalevsky, Poulenc, Sondheim, and others.

♦

Marc Blitzstein’s No For An Answer
Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee (Silverlake)
Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
Sari Gruber, soprano; Rebecca Jo Loeb, mezzo-soprano; Alex Mansoori, tenor
John Brancy, baritone; Michael Barrett and Steven Blier, pianists

This new mounting of two powerful, neglected theater works by Marc Blitzstein and Kurt Weill grapple passionately with themes of social injustice. Blitzstein's No For An Answer, first staged in 1941, focuses on a feisty group of resort hotel workers struggling with unemployment and oppression during the off-season; Der Silbersee is a dystopian fantasy with a miraculous, happy ending. The Second World War cut the original runs of both shows down to a scant two performances each. Weill was forced to flee Germany after the opening of Der Silbersee, and Blitzstein was shipped off to Europe with the Armed Forces soon after his show had its brief moment off-Broadway.

Both works are about ordinary people fighting to free themselves from tyranny and discrimination. In Der Silbersee, there's a miracle; in No For An Answer, a murder. Both works are filled with first-class songs that speak directly to our times.

Soprano Sari Gruber, mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb, tenor Alex Mansoori, and baritone John Brancy bring these gargantuan works to life. Gruber has been a mainstay of NYFOS concerts, hailed by Opera News as "nothing short of sensational." Loeb made her NYFOS debut in 2008 and has recently been featured on the Metropolitan Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin stages. Recognized for his "solid and convincing character tenor" by The New York Times, Mansoori is also a NYFOS regular, ranging in programs from Songs of War and Peace to Goyishe Christmas. Brancy has been recognized by The New York Times as "a vibrant, resonant presence.” He first began his work with NYFOS as a Caramoor Vocal Rising Star in 2010 and has been a fixture of programs since. Brancy was recently featured in a new production of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS with the LA Phil. Both Loeb and Brancy are winners of the Kurt Weill Foundation's prestigious Lotte Lenya Competition.

Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker will collaborate with Steven Blier on the evening's spoken continuity.

“The hardy ensemble [NYFOS] at times uses song as a gentle political weapon.”
— NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 2/18/19

♦

Tain't Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs from Gay Harlem
Thursday, December 12, 2019, 8:00 p.m.
Lucia Bradford, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Blue, tenor
Justin Austin, baritone; Steven Blier and Joseph Li, pianists

NYFOS premieres a fascinating new program called Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do: Songs from Gay Harlem, revealing the musical heart of a subculture within a subculture.

The program features rarities and well-known songs by Bessie Smith, Billy Strayhorn, and Porter Grainger, as well as songs popularized by Albreta Hunter, Ethel Waters, and ‘Ma’ Rainey.

NYFOS brings back the same superb cast of last season's hit production W.C. Handy and the Birth of the Blues (with the exception of Shereen Pimentel, the NYFOS and Blier protégé who was just cast as Maria in Broadway's upcoming revival of West Side Story): mezzo Lucia Bradford, British-American tenor Joshua Blue, and baritone Justin Austin. Steven Blier and Joseph Li share piano duties. Programming assistance was provided by the early blues scholar Elliott Hurwitt.

After the W.C. Handy concert, Opera News ran a rave review that hailed Blier’s piano playing as "simultaneously clean and dirty." It went on to praise the "utterly endearing" Justin Austin and his "honeyed baritone"; the "salty and sultry" Lucia Bradford, who "kept all her numbers fresh and real, allowing her rich, chocolaty voice to discover the hot moments"; and "Joshua Blue, whose saints-raising tenor and complete embodiment of his songs were revelatory."

Cadenza.nyc noted the "performers’ instant rapport with the audience" which "made for an evening that was stimulating and educational, but moreover, emotionally touching." The same excitement and Blier's knowledgeable wit will carry the audience through these stories of Harlem's gay underground. 

♦

The Art of Pleasure
Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 8:00 p.m.
Caramoor’s 2020 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars

The Art of Pleasure begins by exploring intimate moments of pleasure—the beauties of the seashore, romance, and dreams—before veering into a tour of guilty pleasures, “things you might not want your parents to know about." The talented young singers of Caramoor's Vocal Rising Stars program will perform works by Montsalvatge, Rachmaninoff, Jonathan Dove, Tom Lehrer, Leonard Bernstein, The Kinks, and many others.

This concert continues a long tradition of collaboration between NYFOS and Caramoor. The heart of NYFOS is its work with today's finest young singers through professional residences at Juilliard, Caramoor and the North Fork of Long Island, all led by NYFOS artistic directors Steven Blier and Michael Barrett. These song-intensives train young artists in programming, presentation, research, and style. The culminating concerts are, in the words of The New York Times, “A hotbed of intriguing selections and rising singers."

ABOUT NYFOS
“This inimitable concert series has celebrated song in all its many forms,
with sly thematic programs that tease out dormant connections. The festival
has deployed (and often discovered) many of the city’s finest voices.”
— THE NEW YORKER

“The essential core of truth in each song—that part where you feel ‘that's me,
I've been there’—that’s what we’re always looking for.” — Steven Blier

Now in its 32nd 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 SubCulture, OPERA America's National Opera Center, National Sawdust, and the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. 

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 15th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 12th year); San Francisco Opera Center (over 21 years); 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.

“A NYFOS concert is always a revelation.” — OPERA NEWS

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

These programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
in partnership with the City Council.

Caramoor's Terrance W. Schwab Vocal Rising Stars program is made possible by generous support from the Terrance W. Schwab Endowment Fund for Young Vocal Artists.

♦

For further information, press tickets, photos, and to arrange interviews,
please contact Aleba & Co. at 212/206-1450 or aleba@alebaco.com.