THIS NOW NAKED LIFE to Appear at New York Festival of Song

The New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) will present a new original program, This Now Naked Life, on Sunday, November 15, 2026, at 3:00pm at The Theater at 150 W 17th Street.

Part of the NYFOS Next series, curated by pianist Nathaniel LaNasa to spotlight new contemporary song and rising composers, the program explores the sources of wonderment that both empower and humble us, and that help define what it means to be human.

LaNasa is joined by mezzo-soprano Shannon Keegan, tenor Paul Appleby, and Brooklyn-based composer/vocalist leiken in works by Daniel Pesca, Thomas Kotcheff, Elise Arancio, and Joel Balzun, alongside the World Premiere of selections from leiken's I Have Been the Blue Salmon, from their forthcoming evening-length work Ars Moriendi.

In songs about our machines, our planet, and our finitude, the program considers how humanity's reach exceeds its grasp. Appleby sings Pesca's Terra Incognita, which imagines four stages in the process of lunar exploration, as well as Balzun's Anglin Lake. Works by Kotcheff and Arancio featuring Keegan take an in-depth look at natural processes of wonder closer to home, and leiken's I Have Been the Blue Salmon proposes a quietly soulful relationship with limitation.

'These songs swing from the moon landing, with all its excitement, to fragrant, wild sweetgrass and the collective memories it evokes,' says NYFOS Next curator Nathaniel LaNasa. 'As the world seems to move ever faster, I wanted to create a program celebrating my conflicting impulses to explore and to stay rooted in one place.'

This Now Naked Life is the second of three NYFOS Next programs this season. On Sunday, September 27, 2026, NYFOS Next opened its season with A Perfect Rose: Dorothy Parker Songs. Celebrating the 20th-century poet famed for her caustic wit, the program featured the World Premieres of four new 'Parker Songs' by Jeremy Beck. The series concludes with If We Can Love in This Lifetime on Sunday, May 23, 2027, at 3:00pm at The Theater at 150 W 17th Street.

The NYFOS Next series is funded in part by a grant from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music; by the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Program Information

Sunday, November 15, 2026 at 3:00pm
This Now Naked Life (NYFOS Next)
The Theater at 150 W 17th Street | New York, NY
Link: nyfos.org/nyfos-next

Program:

Daniel Pesca - Terra Incognita
Elise Arancio - Don't Talk to Me
Thomas Kotcheff - Both, and More
Joel Balzun - Anglin Lake
leiken - Selections from I Have Been the Blue Salmon, from Ars Moriendi [World Premiere]