Brooklyn Art Song Society Opens Season with FIN DE SIÈCLE

Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) opens its seventh season on Friday October 7, 2016 with Fin de Siecle, the first of five concerts in the ambitious series Wien. This concert is the first in BASS's new primary venue, the Brooklyn Historical Society. Fin de Siecle features four composers who epitomize the opulence and decadence of late German Romanticism: Joseph Marx, Hans Pfitzner, Richard Strauss, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Highlights from the program include Pfitzner's extended masterpiece An den Mond and Richard Strauss's beloved Vier letze Lieder (Four Last Songs). The seven first-class performers include soprano Tami Petty (winner, Joy in Singing) and baritone Tobias Greenhalgh (Wiener Kammeropera). There will also be a pre-concert lecture by esteemed New York University professor Larry Wolff at 7:00 entitled "Art and Politics in Fin de Siecle Vienna."

Brooklyn Art Song Society presents five programs that capture the decadence, radicalism, and intrigue that was Vienna in the first half of the 20th-century. It was the city of Schoenberg, Mahler, Freud, Wittgenstein, and countless other artists, thinkers, and rebels: it was the City of Dreams.

Founded in 1863, Brooklyn Historical Society is a nationally recognized urban history center dedicated to preserving and encouraging the study of Brooklyn's extraordinary 400-year history. Located in Brooklyn Heights and housed in a magnificent landmark building designed by George Post and opened in 1881, today's BHS is a cultural hub for civic dialogue, thoughtful engagement and community outreach.

The Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) will enter its seventh season of first-rate music making in the Fall of 2016, having earned a reputation as one of the preeminent organizations dedicated to the vast repertoire of poetry set to music. The New York Times called BASS "a company well worth watching" and Voce di Meche hailed, "as long as BASS is around we do not need to worry about the future of art song in the USA." Opera News writes, "Brooklyn Art Song Society keeps the intimate recital alive with innovative programming." Past highlights have included performances of the complete songs of Charles Ives and Henri Duparc, a festival of works from Franz Schubert's last year, a five-concert survey of the songs of Les Six, and the complete output of Hugo Wolf over six seasons. Committed to keeping art song relevant in our time BASS has collaborated closely with important living composers such as Tom Cipullo, Herschel Garfein, Daron Hagen, Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, Lowell liebermann, James Matheson, Scott Wheeler and Yehudi Wyner, and has commissioned works from up-an-coming composers Michael Djupstrom, Marie Incontrera, and Andrew Staniland. In May 2015 BASS released its first album, New Voices on Roven Records, which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard Traditional Classical charts. Highlights from this season include the five-concert series Wien, an exploration of Vienna's cultural landscape from 1890-1945; BASS's debut at National Sawdust with In Context: Jake Heggie; and world premieres by Tom Cipullo and Glen Roven. In addition to monthly concerts in Brooklyn, BASS has traveled to Philadelphia, Kansas City, Portland, ME and held residencies at University of Notre Dame and University of Chicago. Brooklyn Art Song Society is proud to make the Brooklyn Historical Society its new primary venue starting in the 2016-2017 season. BASS's artist roster features over 30 of the finest young interpreters of art song. For more information, visit www.brooklynartsongsociety.org.