This week our SoTD curator is composer Susan Botti who will host and curate the second installment of NYFOS Next 2016 on Febuary 11th alongside fellow Manhattan School of Music faculty member, Richard Danielpour. Botti is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Orchestral commissions include works for the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In addition to performing her own vocal works, she specializes in the vocal performance of contemporary music by a diverse range of composers. Thank you, Susan!

Down to the wire… my last song…Oh no… what about…???

Stevie Wonder, Hugo Wolf, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Joni Mitchell, Al Green, Oumou Sangare, The Beatles, Tracy Chapman, Bacharach/David, Bolcom, Mancini, Sondheim, Weill, Caccini, Britten…???!!!

Well, Valentine’s Day is around the corner, so let’s make this a theme-based choice. How about 2 songs that savour the anticipation of a kiss…

Ellington’s sophisticated musically and lyrically, sinuous and chromatic…

Prelude to a Kiss (Duke Ellington/Irving Gordon/Irving Mills) –
with fabulous melodies and lyrics “a Schubert tune with a Gershwin touch”. Here, sung by the great Sarah Vaughan:

And…

Purcell’s Pandora’s box of a kiss –temperature imagery in the words (cool, freeze, fire) and tempos(!) in the music tell the story…

Sweeter than Roses (Henry Purcell) (1695)

(here, sung by the virtuosic David Daniels)

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And here’s a snowy Valentine to NYC – and the (first?!) blizzard of 2016… exquisite words by e.e. Cummings (from his play HIM) – thanks again, NYFOS!: