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NYFOS artistic director Steven Blier is back making the selections for this week's Song of the Day. Enjoy today's selection! My summer has been overflowing with current projects and future ones. I’ve listened to the complete Beatles, hundreds of Schubert Lieder, and...
from Steven Blier: To usher in the weekend, Cole Porter’s “Dream Dancing” played by one of my idols, piano legend Bill Evans. He’s partnering Tony Bennett, the Helden-tenor of popular song. There are very few piano-and-voice jazz albums without bass and drums, so it’s...
from Steven Blier: A minority report on the smash Broadway hit “An American in Paris,” which evoked mixed feelings when I saw last night. I was awash in pleasure and emotion for the first twenty-five minutes, literally sobbing to hear that luxurious Gershwin music and...
from Steven Blier: a tribute to Victor Torres. Today, a singer who serendipitously dropped into my life from two directions. First, my downstairs neighbor gave me a CD she’d picked up in Buenos Aires—Argentine Songs sung by a guy named Victor Torres. She knew I was...
from Steven Blier: Joan Sutherland was my childhood passion. In junior high I used to go into classrooms and scribble “Joan is supreme” in the corner of the blackboard, probably some botched attempt to be transgressive. In the 1970s and 80s I cooled a bit on...
from Steven Blier: A prayer for our country, in the wake of last week’s horrific killings in Charleston: “Oh Glory,” sung by Shirley Verrett in the early years of her career. The pundits are busy spinning this story, some of them in the most appalling, self-serving...