NYFOS's Steven Blier Performs, Offers Master Class In SF This Summer

Steven Blier, Artistic Director of New York Festival Of Song (NYFOS, www.nyfos.org), and called by the New York Times "A National Treasure when it comes to the art of song," will give concerts and master classes through the summer. During the same period, Associate Artistic Director Michael Barrett, General Director of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts will present many important events in vocal music at the Caramoor International Festival.

Steven Blier will be in residence with San Francisco Opera's Merola Program from June 29 through July 7; his stay culminates with a master class on July 6. Following that, he will present a program titled Latin Days, American Nights at Wolf Trap (Vienna, Virginia) on July 18, featuring music of Ginastera, Guastavino, Charles Griffes, Cole Porter, Thelonius Monk and many other composers, with a cast drawn from the resident artists of Wolf Trap Opera: soprano Rena Harms, mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti, tenor Paul Appleby, and bass Nicholas Masters. Appleby, a member of NYFOS' Artist Council, was most recently heard in The Newest Deal, where he premiered Harold Meltzer's song cycle Beautiful Ohio. Blier returns to Wolf Trap for a concert on August 1 for Invitation to the Dance, with music by Brahms, Respighi, André Previn, Gardel, and many others. It will be sung by Angela Mannino, soprano; Catherine Martin, mezzo-soprano; David Portillo, tenor; and Michael Sumuel, bass-baritone. Blier's last concert of the summer season will take place on August 13, when he will perform the program Killer B's: American Song from Amy Beach to The Beach Boys, at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York. Killer B's, which was presented at The Julliard School last season on the annual NYFOS@Juilliard series, features songs by Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber and other distinguished composers whose last names begin with "B." The cast includes NYFOS favorites Rebecca Jo Loeb, mezzo-soprano, and Alex Mansoori, tenor.

Michael Barrett will conduct the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Caramoor on June 26, in an all-Mozart program with guest artist Mitsuko Uchida, pianist. Following that, he will lead the orchestra in a July 4 concert of Sousa, Ives, Bernard Hermann, Grofe and the Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture, and on July 18, a concert of Schumann and Chopin at 200, featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (who was featured in NYFOS' Where We Come From this season), pianist Ken Noda, cellists Edward Arron and Alexis Pia Gerlach. In opera, Caramoor is also presenting Bellini's Norma with Angela Meade on July 10 and 16, and Donizetti's rarely-performed Maria di Rohan on July 24. The rest of the summer will be taken up with the September 2-13 Moab Music Festival in Utah, founded by Mr. Barrett in 1992 with his wife, violist Leslie Tomkins. They will perform in most of the programming, which includes classical chamber music and American classics, with such artists as soprano Amy Burton, composers Kenji Bunch (as violist) and John Musto (as pianist), flutist Christopher Layer, cellist Matt Haimovitz, fiddler Paul Woodiel, and Leslie Tomkins.

New York Festival Of Song, which just completed its 22nd season of concerts, will be heard on a new 13-episode radio program, during the 2010-11 season, hosted by world-renowned mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, and titled "No Song Is Safe From Us," on Chicago's WFMT Radio Network. WFMT is producer of radio programs for the New York Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Wigmore Hall and other major national and international organizations. Highlighting the unique and renowned musical programs of the company, the series will draw on NYFOS recorded archives as well as its acclaimed published recordings. All 13 programs will be distributed by the WFMT Radio Network to stations throughout the United States and the world starting in January 2011.

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

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