Graae, Testa, McNair Featured In GREAT AMERICAN SONGWRITING TEAMS 11/17, 11/19 At Merkin Concert Hall

Kaufman Center and New York Festival Of Song (NYFOS, www.nyfos.org), will premiere Great American Songwriting Teams, an evening of famous and rarely-heard songs honoring the genius of America's classic collaborators, on Tuesday and Thursday November 17 and 19 at 8 PM at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center. Merkin Concert Hall is at 129 West 67th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues), New York, NY 10023. Tickets, $40 - $55 with group discounts, are available by calling 212-501-3330, or visiting www.kaufman-center.org. In addition, there are special $15 student discounts available by calling New York Festival Of Song at 646-230-8380.

The artists for Great American Songwriting Teams will be: Jason Graae, deemed "A master of humorous song" by the New York Times; two-time Grammy Award-winning theater/cabaret star Sylvia McNair, whom the New York Observer called "Thrillingly adept at exploring the subtext of song"; and Broadway's popular Mary Testa, the Tony Award nominee recently called "Absolutely fab" by Entertainment Weekly. NYFOS co-founder and Artistic Director Steven Blier, "a national treasure when it comes to the art of song (New York Times)" will serve as pianist/host.

Great American Songwriting Teams will also be presented November 13 at The Kennedy Center, presented by The Vocal Arts Society Of Washington, DC.

Program to include:

Some Cats Know Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Black Leather Jack and Motorcycle Boots

Love Potion Number 9

Love Walked In George and Ira Gershwin

I See Your Face Before Me Harold Dietz and Arthur Schwartz Blue Grass

You and the Night and the Music

No Other Love Richard Rodgers and

Oscar Hammerstein

Toothbrush Time William Bolcom and

Arnold Weinstein

Little Tin Box

Just A Map Jerry Bock and

Sheldon Harnick

We Can Talk To Each Other Richard Maltby and David Shire

I'm Going To Make You Beautiful

You Took Advantage of Me Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

Sara Lee John Kander and Fred Ebb

Lucky Day DeSylva, Brown and Henderson

(Program and artists subject to change)

NYFOS's upcoming concerts include Killer B's: American Song From Amy Beach To The Beach Boys (January 13), the fifth annual NYFOS@Juilliard at The Juilliard School; The Voluptuous Muse (February 16 and 18) a survey of the last vestiges of lush tonality and decadent Romanticism at the dawn of the 20th century; the first great flowering of French art song performed by America's brightest new vocal stars in The Sweetest Path, part of the Caramoor Vocal Rising Stars program, March 13 at Caramoor and March 16 at Merkin Concert Hall; and The Newest Deal (May 4 and 6) featuring recent American works, including the premiere of the Harold Meltzer song cycle Beautiful Ohio*, created for and performed by Paul Appleby.

New York Festival of Song was founded in 1988 by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett. NYFOS is dedicated to creating intimate song concerts of great beauty, humor and originality. Combining music, poetry, and history, NYFOS performances entertain, educate and create community among audiences and performers. With a far-ranging repertoire of art songs, concert works and theater pieces, its thematic recitals have included programs from Brahms to the Beatles, from the nineteenth-century salons of Paris to Tin Pan Alley, from Russian art song to Argentine tangos, from sixteenth-century lute songs to new music. NYFOS particularly celebrates American song literature and culture, and specializes in premiering and commissioning new American works, including the 2008 commission/premiere of Bastianello/Lucrezia, a double bill of comic operas by John Musto, William Bolcom and Mark Campell. The Bridge Records recording of that will be released in the spring of 2010. They have produced five recordings on the Koch label, including a Grammy Award-winning disc of Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles, as well as the Grammy-nominated recording of Ned Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen on New World Records, and the Bridge Records release of the NYFOS program Spanish Love Songs, called "One of the best of 2009" by Opera News. NYFOS' concert series, touring programs, radio broadcasts, recordings, and educational activities have sparked a new interest in the creative possibilities of the song program, and have inspired the creation of thematic vocal series around the world..

Artistic Director Steven Blier has programmed, performed, translated and annotated over 100 song programs with repertoire spanning the entire range of American song, art song from Schubert to Szymanowski, and popular song from early vaudeville to Lennon-McCartney. In addition, Mr. Blier enjoys an eminent career as an accompanist and vocal coach. Among the many artists he has partnered in recital are Renee Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Samuel Ramey, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Susan Graham and Frederica von Stade.

Photo credit Genevieve Rafter Keddy