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Olaf Bienert: Parc Monceau
A mainstay of NYFOS’s early years, baritone William Sharp sings “Parc Monceau” (Olaf Bienert, text by Kurt Tucholsky) on Unquiet Piece, an album focused on German song written between the world wars.
Leonard Bernstein: Dream With Me
To celebrate NYFOS’s 30th Anniversary Season, Song of the Day is featuring some selections from our commercial recordings. Here is Judy Kaye singing “Dream With Me” from Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan, from NYFOS’s Grammy-winner recording Arias and Barcarolles.
William Bolcom: An Admirer
Machiavelli’s La Mandragola was Mark’s next idea, and he eventually convinced Bill that the idea had legs. “I liked it because it was centered around a woman,” Bill told me, “and (in our version) a woman who comes out on top. I had only one proviso: I wanted to set it in Argentina.” Why? “Well, I wanted to write a zarzuela…as imagined by the Marx Brothers.”
Rebecca Jo Loeb
Artist of the Month rings in 2018 with mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb. Hailed as “a theatrical performer whose rise to watch” (Opera News), Ms. Loeb is based in Germany and sings throughout Europe and in the US. She recently made a “notable Met debut” (New York Times) as Flora in La Traviata at the Metropoitan Opera. A NYFOS Emerging Artist program alum, who has performed in our Mainstage and gala evenings, Ms. Loeb will return to NYFOS at the end of the month in our tour programs celebrating Leonard Bernstein.
Leonard Bernstein: My House
It’s the big Bernstein year. Steven Blier and I have already done a passel of LB shows, with more to come this winter and next fall. But here’s a beautiful rarity from his Peter Pan. Most folks don’t know it, since it didn’t have a big run on B’way. He wrote half a dozen songs for Boris Karloff’s show (he was Hook, of course), but as always, Lenny delivered some keepers.
J. S. Bach: Jesu, meine Freude
Jesu, meine Freude. Jesus, my Joy. Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s fair to say that classical musicians agree that Bach at the very top of creative geniuses. His music seems in a class by itself. And he wrote lots and lots of music. It seemed to just pour out of him. I’m amazed at how personal his music sounds to me. It’s full of emotional feeling, belief, hope, and tragedy. On a snowy day like this, when I hope to stay in, listening to Bach is like having a private religious ceremony. This is a church I actually want to attend.
Bohemian Rhapsody performed by Charles Yang
think most NYFOS folks know Charles Yang by now. He’s our young super star violinist and more recently, he’s carving out an important career as a songwriter and vocalist with an amazing group of three string players (two violins and bass) called Time For Three. They have been playing to much larger audiences than our normal NYFOS crowd (stadiums), and their music is getting deeper, better, and more beautiful every time I hear it.
Johnny Green: You Came To Me Out Of Nowhere
I met Johnny Green in the 1980s. He was well into his 80s and he was there at BAM for the Gershwin celebration concert and TV show to teach us about Gershwin, and about how his big band arrangements went. He took the band through a few numbers and what I most remembered was the sound he got out of them. “This should sound like velvet” he said. We all know velvet doesn’t make a sound, but of course every sax player instantly knew what to do, and they got breathy with their reeds, and the trumpets and trombones fell right in.
Rachel Taylor Brown: December
I live near the East River in New York City. It gives me great pleasure to walk over to the park along its banks and watch the slow winter water flow out to the Atlantic Ocean, to see the reflections of the city lights on the surface. Those lights will have to do: in the city I never really see stars.
Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, SJ: The Huron Carol
None of us will ever know the fullness of our impact on the lives of others. Similarly, it would be impossible for any one of us to trace all the ways that other people have transformed us. Lives may be lived in eras, but are experienced one at a time.
Deanna Witkowski: Kings of Orient
I have always loved the old bible story about the three wise men following a star that leads them to a humble manger and the baby inside of it, trusting in wisdom of the universe, written in the language of the stars, to lead them to something far beyond anything they would ever expect. You can really imagine how much improvising, and how much trust, would be needed to start a journey like that, and believe that their humble destination was really what they had been looking for.
Kontakion of the Mother of God sung by Cappella Romana
This season I am thinking a lot about the nature of time—how the evening seems to fall so soon (is it always so dark so early in the middle of December?), how the days can feel so long and yet the weeks so short.
Y La Bamba: Winter Skin
It feels to me that 2017 has been a year of division and anxiety. There is a list of hurts as far as the eye can see across our beautiful nation, so many conflicting identities seemingly held together in name only. Living into this tension is draining, and I rely on the camaraderie of music. Sometimes I look for songs that serve as fuel, propelling me to do all the good I can with what I have. But sometimes I just want—just need—a little solace, a way to acknowledge the world as it is and still offer hope for a better tomorrow.
Jerry Herman: Dancing
The last time I saw Hello, Dolly! I was twelve years old, and Carol Channing played Dolly. On the way out of the theater—no, it must have been later, at Sam Goody’s where its $4.95 price tag would have come down a whole dollar—my mother bought the original cast album for us. Well, for me. I was the obsessive music-listener in the house. I soon knew all the songs by heart.
John Corigliano: Forever Young
I first met John Corigliano 41 years ago over dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. I was a rather shy young guy and I was out with some very confident people, all of whom friends of some standing. all of them about fifteen years my senior. I’m not sure I made much of an impression that night.