NYFOS to Conclude Cabaret Series with GREAT AMERICAN SONGWRITING TEAMS, 5/4

New York Festival of Song completes its second season of the NYFOS After Hours cabaret series at HENRY's Restaurant on the Upper West Side, with an encore presentation of this year's hugely entertaining NYFOS@Juilliard concert, Great American Songwriting Teams, on Monday, May 4, 2015 at 10:00 p.m.

A celebration of our country's illustrious creative duos, Great American Songwriting Teams is a hymn to the iconic ampersands of American popular song: George & Ira Gershwin, Comden & Green, Bock & Harnick, Rodgers & Hart (& Hammerstein), Leiber & Stoller, and many others.

Seven singers from Juilliard will join NYFOS Artistic Director and pianist Steven Blier for the evening, including soprano Tiffany Townsend, mezzo-sopranos Hannah McDermott and Amanda Bottoms, tenors James Knight, Alexander McKissick, and Aaron Mor, and baritone Theo Hoffman.

There is a $10 cover and reservations are required by calling 212-866-0600. Walk-ins are always welcome at the bar.

In February 2010 at HENRY's Restaurant on the Upper West Side, an informal world-class cabaret series began, springing out of a personal friendship between NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier and restaurant owner Henry Rinehart. Eventually dubbed NYFOS After Hours, these highly popular late-night-and unamplified-concerts entertain diners with superlative voices in a mix of freshly created shows and revivals of past programs. The cream of New York's rising talent joins some of the city's most illustrious singers and actors, accompanied by Blier at the piano.

Blier is also the master of ceremonies, and it's his "deliciously witty introductions" that "sew the parts together," writes The New York Times. The Washington Post marvels at his "uncanny way of putting together a seemingly diverse program of songs-including Broadway classics and pop-under a single unifying theme."

NYFOS After Hours is presented as part of the restaurant's ongoing series, Sing for Your Supper @ HENRY's. Henry Rinehart says: "All of us at HENRY's are thrilled to host this series with Steven Blier and NYFOS. NYFOS is one of New York's great cultural institutions and Steven is a dear friend. Together we will continue to present Broadway's most intimate night of song to packed houses."

PROGRAM:

Tiffany Townsend, soprano; Hannah McDermott, mezzo-soprano;
Amanda Bottoms, mezzo-soprano; James Knight, tenor;
Alexander McKissick, tenor; Aaron Mor, tenor; Theo Hoffman, baritone
Steven Blier, pianist and arranger

Lucky Day (DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson)
The Sheik of Avenue B (Kalmar and Ruby)
It Never Entered My Mind (Rodgers and Hart)
I Was Doing All Right (The Gershwins)
Blue Grass (Dietz and Schwarz)
You and the Night and the Music (Dietz and Schwarz)
Wrong Note Rag (Comden and Green)
Ascot Gavotte (Lerner and Loewe)
Real Live Girl (Coleman and Leigh)
Blue (Bolcom and Weinstein)
I Want It All (Comden and Green)
Love Potion No. 9 (Leiber and Stoller)

ABOUT NYFOS (www.nyfos.org) - Now in its 27th 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 NYFOS MAINSTAGE, its series of thematic song programs, drawing together rarely-heard songs of all kinds, overriding traditional distinctions between high and low performance 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. Its recently released CD on the GPR label, Canción amorosa, focuses on Spanish song-Basque, Catalan, Castilian, and Sephardic-with soprano Corinne Winters accompanied by Steven Blier.

In November 2010, NYFOS premiered NYFOS NEXT, a series for new songs, hosted by guest composers in intimate venues. This season the series returns as a mini-festival during the month of February 2015 with all concerts presented at OPERA America's National Opera Center. In the fall of 2014, NYFOS officially introduced its unamplified cabaret series NYFOS AFTER HOURS at HENRY's Restaurant on the Upper West Side, drawing full houses and superlative voices accompanied by Blier at the piano.

NYFOS is passionate about nurturing the artistry and careers of young singers, and through its NYFOS EMERGING ARTISTS program has developed professional training residencies around the country, including The Juilliard School's Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts (now in its 10th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 7th year in March 2015); San Francisco Opera Center (over 15 years as of March 2014); Glimmerglass Opera (2008-2010); and its newest project, NYFOS@North Fork in Orient, NY (2 years).

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.

Pictured: NYFOS@Juilliard performance of "Great American Songwriting Teams", January 2015. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy.