New York Festival Of Song to Present 15th Annual NYFOS Next Festival

New York Festival of Song, led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, kicks off its 2024-2025 season with the 15th annual NYFOS Next Festival on Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. at the Rubin Museum of Art.

NYFOS's series for new song returns with two concerts this season, the first, titled Learning, Fast and Slow, features soprano Britt Hewitt and mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert, with Steven Palacio on bassoon and Nathaniel LaNasa on piano performing works by Kamala Sankaram and LJ White, including White's recent Music Library Love Song for soprano and piano, and the world premiere of Timo Andres's On My Fortieth Birthday.

"When I was ten, I knew exactly who I was," said NYFOS Next curator, Nathaniel LaNasa. "When I was twenty, I had all the answers. When I turned thirty... I thought at least I had the right questions? The more I experience the world, the more I discover I have no idea. In programming this recital, I wanted to explore time's passing and life lessons that come only in their own time. Kamala Sankaram's meditations on aging, Theo Chandler's explorations of repetition, and a birthday song premiere by Timo Andres join two occasions of queer discovery by LJ White. These songs celebrate flux, flashes of inspiration, moments of instruction: twinkles in which I am no longer who I was, but am not yet who I will be."

Called "a series that makes a passionate case for the art song as a can't-live-without item on any civilized traveler's packing list" (The New York Times), the NYFOS Next series returns with a program titled A Space to Make on Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. at the Rubin Museum of Art. Baritone Gregory Feldmann and LaNasa investigate monuments and landmarks in music in the world premiere of Iván Rodriguez's Mother of Exiles, a towering rhapsody on Emma Lazaruz's "The New Colossus." Soprano Robin Steitz and mezzo-soprano Theo Hayes come together with Feldmann to perform additional works by Joseph Rubinstein, Isabella Gellis, and Hannah Kendall.

All NYFOS programming is funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

The NYFOS Mainstage and the NYFOS Next series are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Concert Information

NYFOS Next Series at the Rubin Museum of Art - Learning, Fast and Slow
Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 3:00 p.m.
Rubin Museum of Art | 150 W 17th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: 2-Concert Subscriptions: $40; Single Tickets: $25
Link: Subscription pre-orders are available now from nyfos.org/24-25season

Program:
Kamala Sankaram - Listen (2020)
LJ White - Music Library Love Song (2024)
LJ White - Shuffled Notes from a Guide to Drag Kinging (2018)
Karim Al-Zand - Two Songs (2021)
Theo Chandler - As Days Repeat (2023)
Theo Chandler - Canyon Song (2023)
Iván Enrique Rodriguez - Mamá María: Cuento de Hadas en Variaciones (Mother Mary: Fairy Tale in Variations) (2020)
Timo Andres - On My Fortieth Birthday (2021) *World Premiere
Kamala Sankaram - A Certain Age (2022)

Artists:
Blythe Gaissert, mezzo-soprano
Britt Hewitt, soprano
Steven Palacio, bassoon
Nathaniel LaNasa, piano

NYFOS Next Series at the Rubin Museum of Art - A Space to Make
Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 3:00 p.m.
Rubin Museum of Art | 150 W 17th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: Subscriptions to the 2-concert series: $40; Single Tickets: $25
Link: https://nyfos.org/nyfos-next/

Program:
Joseph Rubinstein - Uncoil (2023)
Iván Rodriguez - Mother of Exiles (2020) *World Premiere
Isabella Gellis - Montreal Songs (2021)
Hannah Kendall - Rosalind (2020)
Additional songs to be announced

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