NYFOS Announces 22nd Season At Merkin Concert Hall At Kaufman Center And The Julliard School

New York Festival Of Song (NYFOS, www.nyfos.org), founded by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, who "redefined the song recital with daring and dramatic programming," (The New Yorker) announces its 22nd Season for 2009-2010 with performances at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center and at The Juilliard School. The concerts at Merkin Concert Hall, presented by Kaufman Center and New York Festival of Song, will encompass a wide variety of styles and themes: Broadway and popular songs (Great American Songwriting Teams); songs by late-Romantic composers from Middle and Eastern Europe (The Voluptuous Muse); new American music (The Newest Deal); French mélodie (The Sweetest Path); and popular and classical songs evoking the birthplaces and musical origins of favorite NYFOS artists (Where We Come From). The fifth annual NYFOS@Juilliard concert, Killer B's, will encompass a century of American song from Amy Beach to The Beach Boys.

Curtain time for all concerts is 8 PM. Single ticket prices (single tickets on sale beginning August 15) at Merkin Concert Hall are $40 to $55, with a limited number of $15 student tickets available by calling NYFOS at (646) 230-8380. Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center is at 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023. Season packages are available by writing to the box office at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, or by calling (212) 501-3330, or online at www.kaufman-center.org. Free tickets for the January 13 Killer B's concert in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at The Juilliard School will be available after January 4 at The Juilliard School box office, 155 West 65th Street, New York, NY 10023.

NYFOS concerts will feature a long list of distinguished singers: The Metropolitan Opera's Amy Burton, Paul Appleby (winner of the National Council Auditions last season), Sasha Cooke, Joseph Kaiser and Kate Lindsey; Chicago Lyric Opera artists Dina Kuznetsova and Sari Gruber; Broadway's Mary Testa (most recently in Guys and Dolls); cabaret and musical theater artists Sylvia McNair and Jason Graae; William Sharp, a leading orchestral soloist, and Grammy nominee for NYFOS's recording of Leonard Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles; rising stars including Anne-Carolyn Bird and Andrew Garland; and and James Martin, a featured favorite in NYFOS's most popular programs including "Lost Tribes of Vaudeville," "Hoagy, Harry and Harold," and "At Harlem's Height," (in Lincoln Center's American Songbook presentation of NYFOS). Pianists Steven Blier ("A national treasure when it comes to the art of song" - The New York Times) and Michael Barrett, General Director of Caramoor Center for Music and Arts, will narrate and accompany the programs.

The company's opening concert, Where We Come From, will feature members of a new company project: The Artists Council. Council members will contribute their time and expertise to NYFOS in performing, programming, consulting and advocacy.

New York Festival of Song's 2009-2010 Season
At Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, unless otherwise noted

All concerts at 8 PM

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
WHERE WE COME FROM

Featuring Amy Burton, Sari Gruber, Dina Kuznetsova, Sasha Cooke, Kate Lindsey, Joseph Kaiser, Paul Appleby, William Sharp and James Martin. This program will take musical journeys to their respective birthplaces, from Indiana and Mississippi, to Canada, Germany and Russia, explore their musical backgrounds, from opera and art song to garage bands and the blues, and celebrate the artistic home they have found in New York Festival of Song. NYFOS Artistic Directors and pianists Steven Blier and Michael Barrett accompany them.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
GREAT AMERICAN SONGWRITING TEAMS

An evening of famous and rarely-heard songs in honor of America's classic songwriting collaborators: George & Ira Gershwin, Dietz & Schwartz, Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe, Bock & Harnick, Kander & Ebb, Leiber & Stoller, Bolcom & Weinstein, and others. Performers include New York stage leading lights Sylvia McNair, Mary Testa and Jason Graae with Steven Blier at the piano.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
At The Juilliard School/Peter Jay Sharp Theater
KILLER B's: American Song from Amy Beach to The Beach Boys

The fifth annual edition of NYFOS@Juilliard celebrates a wealth of new, young talent. Composers will include Amy Beach, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, William Bolcom, Paul Bowles, Eubie Blake, Robert Beaser, Harry T. Burleigh, and The Beach Boys. Artists to be announced.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
THE VOLUPTUOUS MUSE

A program highlighting the lush harmonies and exotic themes of late-Romantic masters Nikolai Medtner, Karol Szymanowski, Erich Korngold and Richard Strauss and their contemporaries. These exquisitely-crafted creations are charged with seductive beauty and expressive power, composed during a unique historic moment of restless change-the era between the turn of the 20th century and the First World War. The exciting Russian-American soprano Dina Kuznetsova and two rising stars of the Met Opera stage, mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey and tenor Joseph Kaiser, bring virtuosity and commitment to a new program of this dazzling repertoire. Steven Blier and Michael Barrett join them at the piano.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
THE SWEETEST PATH

NYFOS's second weeklong residency at Caramoor's Vocal Rising Stars project culminates with this new program of French art song culled from its first great flowering; it will be presented first in the Music Room at Caramoor on March 13, and repeated in New York at Merkin Concert Hall on March 16. A quartet of exciting young singers, to be selected from artists around the United States, perform music by Gounod, Fauré, Ravel, Debussy and many others; Steven Blier and Michael Barrett partner them at the piano.

Monday, April 12, 2010
NYFOS Annual Gala
Concert at 7 PM in Weill RecitAl Hall at Carnegie Hall
Dinner to follow at a location to be announced
Program and artists to be announced

Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
World Premiere
THE NEWEST DEAL

An all-new NYFOS program of American works to include the premiere of Beautiful Ohio, a song cycle by 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist Harold Meltzer, composed specifically for the young American tenor Paul Appleby. Among the other featured music will be Gabe Kahane's Craigslistlieder, an eight-movement song cycle which comprises settings of anonymous classified ads from craigslist.org. Joining Mr. Appleby and making her NYFOS debut will be soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, along with baritone Andrew Garland and pianists Steven Blier and Michael Barrett.

Beautiful Ohio is commissioned by The ASCAP Foundation/Charles Kingsford Fund.

Programs and artists subject to change.

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 to 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. 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. NYFOS's concert series, touring programs, radio broadcasts, recordings, and educational activities have inspired 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.
Mr. Blier teaches a master class with the San Francisco Opera's Merola Program on July 17. His next project will be a concert at Wolf Trap (Vienna, Virginia) on August 1, with a cast drawn from the resident artists of Wolf Trap Opera: The Pursuit of Love, a compendium of song cycles and quartets by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Edvard Grieg, Enrique Granados, and Stephen Sondheim. One of the evening's musical highlights will be Gabe Kahane's instant classic, Craigslistlieder, written in 2006. The program features tenor Paul Appleby, who won the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions this past spring. Following this, Mr. Blier performs Latin Lovers: An Evening of Cuban and South American Song at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York. Latin Lovers, which was presented at The Julliard School last season, features songs by Carlos Guastavino, Astor Piazzolla, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ernesto Lecuona, and many others. The cast for Latin Lovers will once again include the brilliant mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb.

Associate Artistic Director Michael Barrett is also the Chief Executive and General Director of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, known for its International Summer Music Festival. In 1992 Mr. Barrett and his wife Leslie Tomkins founded the Moab Music Festival in Utah, for which he serves as music director. He has conducted major orchestras here and abroad in the symphonic, operatic, and dance repertoire, and is the former director of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y. Mr. Barrett has conducted and played premieres by Bernstein, Blitzstein, Bolcom, Kernis, Ned Rorem, John Musto, StewArt Wallace, Takemitsu, Del Tredici and John Corigliano.

NYFOS's New York City concert series is funded, in part, by the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

 

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