Learning, Fast and Slow

SUN, SEPT 29, 2024, 3pm
The Theater at the
Rubin Museum of Art
150 W 17th Street, NYC

Pianist and curator Nathaniel LaNasa returns with two concerts showcasing the best in contemporary art song. In September, mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert and soprano Britt Hewitt perform pieces for voice and bassoon by Kamala Sankaram and LJ White, with bassoonist, Steven Palacio.

The Program

Kamala Sankaram: “Listen,” 2020
LJ White: “Music Library Love Song,” 2024
LJ White: “Shuffled Notes from ‘a Guide to Drag Kinging,'” 2018
Karim Al-Zand: “Two Songs,” 2021
Theo Chandler: “As Days Repeat,” 2023
Theo Chandler: “Canyon Song,” 2023
Iván Enrique Rodriguez: “Mamá María” 2020
Timo Andres: “On My Fortieth Birthday,” 2021 (World Premiere)
Kamala Sankaram: “A Certain Age,” 2022

Curator Nathaniel LaNasa on the concert — When I was ten, I knew exactly who I was. When I was twenty, I had all the answers. When I turned thirty… I thought at least I had the right questions? The more I experience the world, the more I discover I have no idea. In programming this recital, I wanted to explore time’s passing and life lessons that come only in their own time. Kamala Sankaram’s meditations on aging, Theo Chandler’s explorations of repetition, and a birthday song premiere by Timo Andres join two occasions of queer discovery by LJ White. These songs celebrate flux, flashes of inspiration, moments of instruction: twinkles in which I am no longer who I was, but am not yet who I will be.

A Space to Make

SUN, NOV 3, 2024, 3pm
The Theater at the
Rubin Museum of Art*
150 W 17th Street, NYC

Robin Steitz and Gregory Feldmann return to the series in November, performing Hannah Kendall’s Rosalind (2020) for soprano, baritone, piano; Mezzo-soprano Theo Hayes rounds at the cast with Nathaniel LaNasa and Eric Sedgwick at the keyboard, performing songs by Iván Rodriguez, Isabella Gellis, Sarah Gibson, Jack Perla, Matthew Ricketts, and Joseph Rubinstein. 

The Program

Joe Rubinstein: Uncoil
Hannah Kendall: Rosalind
Matthew Ricketts: Everything is New
Jack Perla: The Peace of Wild Things (WP)
Jack Perla: Down to the Twigs and Seeds (WP)
Isabella Gellis: Montreal Songs
Ivan Rodriguez: Mother of Exiles
Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff: Unread Messages
NYFOS Next Curator Nathaniel LaNasa shares his thoughts on the program: “Iván Rodriguez wrote ‘Mother of Exiles,’ a towering rhapsody on Emma Lazarus’ ‘The New Colossus,’ for Gregory Feldmann’s and my investigation of monuments and landmarks in music. Matthew Ricketts wrote ‘Everything is New,’ a story song about a young person falling in love with music, for our project celebrating neighborhood institutions. These songs trace ways we create our spaces and ways they create us. Exploring overlapping spaces, Isabella Gellis’s exquisite settings of folk songs from different cultures in Montreal give that city a sensitive musical portrait, and Hannah Kendall, with poetry by Sabrina Mahfouz, shows Shakespeare’s heroine Rosalind carving out a place for an identity chosen, not bestowed. We complete the program with the premiere of two new songs by Jack Perla and a delightful work for soprano and piano four-hands by Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff.”

Single tickets $25; general admission. Student tickets $10

Seating for the NYFOS Next series is general admission. No physical tickets will be used for this program; attendees’ names will be on a list at the door. Walk-up ticket buyers welcome!  

*While the Rubin Museum galleries are now closed, the theater and lobby space are still open for events, including our November 3 concert.  

NYFOS Next is New York Festival of Song’s “invaluable contemporary-music series” (The New Yorker). With an emphasis on spontaneity, novelty, and collaboration, NYFOS Next offers a forum for song composers to share their work, and gives audiences an intimate encounter with the creative process, as new songs are presented in an informal setting. Composers or performers are invited to curate and host their own programs, showcasing their own work and the works of their peers, students or mentors. Past curators include Mark Adamo, Clarice Assad, Mark Campbell, Christopher Cerrone, Mohammed Fairouz, Gregory Feldmann, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kyle Jarrow (with Lauren Worsham), Gabriel Kahane, Laura Kaminsky, Laura Karpman & Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, Carla Kilhstedt, Phil Kline, Lowell Liebermann, David T. Little, Harold Meltzer, Paul Moravec, John Musto, Russell Platt, Kevin Puts, Bright Sheng, and Joseph Thalken. NYFOS welcomes Nathaniel LaNasa as the curator of the 24-25 NYFOS Next mini-series.

“The New York Festival of Song delves into art song’s future, with composers leading the way.”
— THE WALL STREET JOURNAL on NYFOS Next

“A series that makes a passionate case for the art song as a can’t-live-without item on any civilized traveler’s packing list.”
— THE NEW YORK TIMES on NYFOS Next

“An evening that felt like the cutting edge of experimental art song. In a word, it felt very ‘next.'” 
— OPERA NEWS on NYFOS Next