New York Festival of Song
The New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) presents an annual series of concerts in New York City dedicated to the art of song, classical, modern and popular. In addition, this organization commissions new works and recordings, including the Grammy Award winning recording of Leonard Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles (Koch), and the Grammy nominated recording of Ned Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen (1997, New World Records).
The festival was founded in 1988 by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett.
For the 100th anniversary of the Juilliard School in January 2006, NYFOS collaborated on a program featuring "100 Years of Juilliard Composers in Song".
In 2007, NYFOS released a live-recording CD entitled Spanish Love Songs (Bridge), featuring Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Joseph Kaiser, performing with Blier and Barrett at Caramoor. The program was recorded live just before Lieberson's death in 2006.
In December 2008, Bridge Records released an original cast recording of Bastianello / Lucrezia, featuring soprano Lisa Vroman, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Paul Appleby, baritone Patrick Mason and bass Matt Boehler, with pianists Steven Blier and Michael Barrett. With a score by John Musto and a libretto by Mark Campbell, Bastianello is a family fable of love and folly based on a poignant Italian folk tale. In March 2008, it had its World Premiere, along with William Bolcom's comic piece Lucrezia (a version of Machiavelli′s La Mandragola, libretto also by Mark Campbell) at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, commissioned and presented by the New York Festival of Song.[1]
Notable Programs
NYFOS has created and premiered over a hundred unique programs,[1] many of which have toured the United States. Some that have been favorably reviewed and/or frequently reprised:
At Harlem's Height, premiered in 2001, explores the music of the Harlem Renaissance, with songs by Eubie Blake, Fats Waller, William Grant Still, Florence Price and others.
Songs of Peace and War, premiered in 2001, shortly after the World Trade Center attack.
Dvořák and the American Soul, premiered in 2002, juxtaposes songs by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák and those of his African-American students from the period in the 1890s when he was teaching at the National Conservatory in New York, showing how each influenced the other.
Blok and Akhmatova: Poets Without Heroes, premiered in 2005, explores music composed around the work of these Russian poets.
2008-2009 Season at Merkin Hall
SEPTEMBER 23 & 25, 2008: “A Bernstein & Bolcom Celebration”
- A tribute to two of New York Festival of Song’s guiding lights, Leonard Bernstein and William Bolcom, quintessential American composers and great spirits who have long provided wisdom, guidance, and songs to NYFOS. Songs from Bernstein's Peter Pan, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Songfest, Wonderful Town, On the Town, Arias and Barcarolles, Mass; Bolcom's Cabaret Songs, "I Will Breathe a Mountain", Briefly It Enters, McTeague; and a special appearance by Joan Morris and Bolcom, sharing signature songs from their repertoire.
NOVEMBER 18 & 20, 2008: “Fugitives”
- An evening of songs from the concert stage, the movies, Broadway, and Berlin’s cabarets that evidence the varied fates of the gifted composers who fled destruction during Hitler’s rise to power—some to begin new lives and brilliant careers abroad, others confronting darker fortunes. Music by Kurt Weill, Franz Schreker, Arnold Zemlinsky, Kurt Tucholsky, Hans Krása, Erich Korngold, Hanns Eisler, Friedrich Hollaender and many others.
FEBRUARY 10 & 12, 2009: "Voices of the Jewish Diaspora"
- Songs in many languages trace the culturally diverse Jewish communities that flourished as the tribes of Israel spread out across the globe. Sephardic texts set by Alberto Hemsi and Roberto Sierra; Second Avenue specialties by Irving Berlin and Joseph Rumshinsky; art songs by Ravel, Milhaud and Rubinstein; plus music by Gershwin and Bernstein.
MARCH 17, 2009: “Songs of the Irish Poets”
- The lyricism of the Emerald Isle’s greatest writers, including Thomas Moore, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Paul Muldoon, as set to music by Beethoven, Britten, Balfe, Barber and others; with a group of traditional Irish songs featuring the fiddle playing of Paul Woodiel.
MAY 19 & 21, 2009: “The Welcome Shore”
- A hymn to rivers and oceans stirs the heart and the imagination as the summer season draws near. Music by Elgar (the magnificent Sea Pictures), Fauré, Guastavino, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Noël Coward, Pauline Viardot and many others.
Notes
References
- Midgette, Anne (2003-05-24). "For a Champion of Song, It's About Communicating". The New York Times.
- Keller, Johanna (2003-04). "What a Song Can Do". Opera News. The Metropolitan Opera Guild. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - Michener, Charles (2004-01-05). "The Soul Singer". The New Yorker.
I first heard Hunt Lieberson twelve years ago with another such group, the New York Festival of Song, at a benefit evening in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment, in New York. She sang several Spanish love songs, and when she had finished I went up to her and said, “You have one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. Who are you?”
- Ross, Alex (2001-12-10). "Intimate Voices". The New Yorker.
- Kwak, Paul (2005-12). "Subtleties and Surprises in a Showcase of Juilliard Song". The Juilliard Journal Online. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - Gelbert, Bruce-Michael (2005-02-23). "New York Festival of Song: At Harlem's Height". TheatreScene.net.
- Midgette, Anne (2001-10-15). "The Songs Of Harlem, Informally Informative". The New York Times.
- Griffiths, Paul (2002-11-27). "What Dvorak Brought With Him And What He Took Back Home". The New York Times.
- Gelbert, Bruce-Michael (2003-03-14). "New York Festival of Song: Songs of Peace and War". TheatreScene.net.
- Davis, Peter G. (2005-01-31). "A Russian Winter". New York Magazine.
- Eichler, Jeremy (2005-01-21). "Mother Russia, With the Language Barrier Removed". The New York Times.