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The New York Festival of Song opened its doors for business 32 years ago. Bolstered by a great passion for song, the generous good will of our friends, and a thousand-dollar gift from our first benefactor Joe Machlis, Michael Barrett and I mounted our first season in...
Our final subscription concert is set for March 17. It’s called The Art of Pleasure, a show I first devised at Wolf Trap and later repeated in Long Island. This time it will come out of our collaboration with Caramoor’s Vocal Rising Stars program, an annual art song...
Our continuing preview of this year’s concerts continues with a peek at Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs of Gay Harlem, set for December 12. After the dizzying success of last year’s tribute to W. C. Handy, I wanted to get the team together again as soon as...
Continuing my preview of our fall concerts: Silverlake and No For an Answer, November 19 at Merkin Hall. Michael and I both had a hankering to revive NYFOS' tradition of presenting rare theater pieces in concert versions. Kurt Weill's "Silverlake" was a feature of...
NYFOS’s 32nd season is upon us, our Lapis Anniversary, and I thought I’d preview our four mainstage concerts this week. Of course, choosing just one song from each is a kind of sweet torture, so I decided just to close my eyes and point. Opening night—October 16—will...
Before the concert:I’ve been abstracted and quietly jittery for a few days now—at least, when I am with my housemates making dinner or hanging out on the porch. It’s normal for me to feel the weight of the world on my shoulders before I play. Even this relatively...