The Wider View: Songs by Black Composers

The Wider View: Songs by Black Composers

Like many pianists in my field, I’ve had the Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers on my shelf for decades. NYFOS has made good use of it over the years, often programming those concert pieces alongside popular songs by Eubie Blake and Fats Waller. It was...
Program Notes: Love Songs in 176 Keys

Program Notes: Love Songs in 176 Keys

When I was a child, my favorite part of every lesson was the last five minutes when I got to play duets with my teacher. We’d rip through Schubert’s Marche Militaire or the four-hand piano reduction of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, and I was in heaven. Sure, I liked...
Buenos Aires: Then & Now Program Notes

Buenos Aires: Then & Now Program Notes

My love for Argentinean music began with a single song:  Carlos Guastavino’s “La rosa y el sauce,” which I heard at Dalton Baldwin’s art song seminar in Princeton 41 years ago. The music worked like a drug on my nervous system. I begged the performers for a copy,...
And…We’re Back! Program Notes

And…We’re Back! Program Notes

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? When the pandemic hit, our lives became a surreal mixture of Rip Van Winkle and a psych lab deprivation experiment. I’m proud that NYFOS managed to keep producing concerts with a new video series, NYFOS@Home. Reaching out to colleagues...

The Art of Pleasure

The idea for this program came to me a few years ago over breakfast one morning. The gentle, rational voices of NPR’s morning announcers couldn’t disguise the sheer cruelty and greed detailed in the day’s news. My antipathy to the word “tweet” was ballooning and my...

Hear Them Talkin’ To Ya

Program notes for Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs of Gay HarlemThursday, December 12 at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center “The World’s Most Glamorous Atmosphere. Why, it is just like the Arabian Nights!”—Duke Ellington, on first seeing Harlem in...