My friend Becca Jo’s challenge to stop telling her what performances I didn’t like, and instead show her what I did like, has stayed with me. Ever since our conversation last Friday I’ve been pondering: where does my own heart lie? What is my musical home base? I’ve played everything from blues to Berlioz, Sondheim […]
Read MoreThis week I find myself floating around in what feels like a weightless state, after four months of unremitting pressure. Almost all of the NYFOS subscription concerts fell into the autumn season, along with the preparations for the Juilliard concert in January. We were not able to do our annual Christmas show, A Goyishe Christmas, due […]
Read MoreProgram notes for Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs of Gay HarlemThursday, December 12 at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center My first awareness of Harlem’s gay subculture came from an unlikely source: a Cole Porter song I heard decades ago called “The Happy Heaven of Harlem.” In it, Porter extols the pleasures of […]
Read MoreKurt Weill and Marc Blitzstein may not have been bosom buddies, yet their art was so intertwined as to make them indispensable to one another. Weill’s musical tropes are at the heart of Blitzstein’s “The Nickel Under the Foot,” the song that launched his breakout musical The Cradle Will Rock. And when Cradle opened in […]
Read MoreThe New York Festival of Song opened its doors for business 32 years ago. Bolstered by a great passion for song, the generous good will of our friends, and a thousand-dollar gift from our first benefactor Joe Machlis, Michael Barrett and I mounted our first season in the fall of 1988. Tonight NYFOS is reviving […]
Read MoreOur final subscription concert is set for March 17. It’s called The Art of Pleasure, a show I first devised at Wolf Trap and later repeated in Long Island. This time it will come out of our collaboration with Caramoor’s Vocal Rising Stars program, an annual art song zen-retreat in Katonah. I’ve just completed casting, […]
Read MoreOur continuing preview of this year’s concerts continues with a peek at Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs of Gay Harlem, set for December 12. After the dizzying success of last year’s tribute to W. C. Handy, I wanted to get the team together again as soon as possible. And I almost succeeded: vocalists […]
Read MoreContinuing my preview of our fall concerts: Silverlake and No For an Answer, November 19 at Merkin Hall. Michael and I both had a hankering to revive NYFOS’ tradition of presenting rare theater pieces in concert versions. Kurt Weill’s “Silverlake” was a feature of the last NYFOS@Juilliard evening, and the three songs we did whetted […]
Read MoreNYFOS’s 32nd season is upon us, our Lapis Anniversary, and I thought I’d preview our four mainstage concerts this week. Of course, choosing just one song from each is a kind of sweet torture, so I decided just to close my eyes and point. Opening night—October 16—will be an updated reprise of NYFOS’ very first concert, Lyrics […]
Read MoreBefore the concert:I’ve been abstracted and quietly jittery for a few days now—at least, when I am with my housemates making dinner or hanging out on the porch. It’s normal for me to feel the weight of the world on my shoulders before I play. Even this relatively informal, forgiving performance in Orient evokes feelings […]
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