Song of the Day turns 3 this week! Here’s a look back at our first week of songs (beginning June 15, 2015) from NYFOS’s artistic director Steven Blier. It takes a lot of courage to give your first performance of a song in front of the New York audience and...
written by
Steven Blier
Schubert: Who is Silvia?
Song of the Day turns 3 this week! Here’s a look back at our first week of songs (beginning June 15, 2015) from NYFOS’s artistic director Steven Blier. I went out to Brooklyn last week and saw the Fiasco Theater’s production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was a...
Mozart: Queen of the Night’s Act II aria
Song of the Day turns 3 this week! Here's a look back at our first week of songs (beginning June 15, 2015) from NYFOS's artistic director Steven Blier. This song-a-day blog is a project I’ve had in mind for years, and I am thrilled to share some of the vocal music I...
Michael John LaChiusa: Heaven
The Art of Pleasure ends with a section simply called “Peace.” The centerpiece is an unpublished song by Michael John LaChiusa entitled “Heaven,” which I first heard on Mary Testa’s album, Have Faith. When I was programming NYFOS’s 30th anniversary gala, all the songs...
Tom Lehrer: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
“The Art of Pleasure”—my Wolf Trap concert for this year—includes a section of guilty pleasures. This was at once the most fun and the most difficult group to program. How far were we willing to go? It’s not so easy to assign louche material for a group of people you...
The Kinks: Lola
In the interest of empowering the cast of my Wolf Trap show “The Art of Pleasure,” I asked them to make suggestions of songs and subjects. “What pleasures beyond the obvious ones (food and sex) do you want to sing about, and what songs bring those pleasures to life...







