Lauren Worsham, Mary Testa and More Open NYFOS Season with RODGERS, RODGERS & GUETTEL Tonight

New York Festival of Song opens its 2016-17 Mainstage season at Merkin Concert Hall with two evenings devoted to the Rodgers family-Richard, Mary, and Adam Guettel (with rare unpublished songs by both Guettel and his mother Mary). Entitled Rodgers, Rodgers & Guettel: A Century of American Musical Theater, the performances take place tonight, November 1, 2016 at 8:00 p.m. and Thursday, November 3, 2016 at 8:00 p.m.

Richard Rodgers' legacy included not only his sophisticated, street-wise songs written with Lorenz Hart and his groundbreaking work with Oscar Hammerstein III but also the indispensable music of his descendants: daughter Mary Rodgers (Once Upon a Mattress) and grandson Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza). Their songs are like a hundred-year history of American mores, from the Jazz Age to the Information Era. Filled with intelligence, humanity, and breathtaking melody, the Rodgers family sings of the America we know-and the America we dream of.

A thrilling quartet of theatrical vocalists perform and interpret these songs: soprano Lauren Worsham, whose Broadway debut in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder won her a Drama Desk Award and a Tony Nomination; mezzo Mary Testa, whose many appearances on Broadway include On the Town, Xanadu, Forty-Second Street, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; baritone John Brancy, praised by critic Anne Midgette in The Washington Post for his "consummate singing, a warm, vivid baritone with a lot of color"; and Hal Cazalet, whose "bright, yet burnished, lyric tenor voice" (Theater Jones) has delighted audiences throughout Europe and America in a wide range of opera, musical theater, and cabaret. Cazalet is the great-grandson of the iconic writer P. G. Wodehouse, and carries on his great predecessor's tradition of comic charm and stage savvy.

THE PROGRAM

(subject to change)

RODGERS AND HART
Dear Old Syracuse
Maybe It's Me
Ev'rybody Loves You

RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN
Out of My Dreams
The Gentleman Is a Dope
Some Enchanted Evening
Bargaining Song

Mary Rodgers
Something Known
Happily Ever After
Am I
Good Man
Fear
The Boy From...

Adam Guettel
There Go I
Saint Who
Dividing Day
Awaiting You
Migratory V

Now in its 29th season, New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) is dedicated to creating intimate song concerts of great beauty and originality. Weaving music, poetry, history and humor into evenings of compelling theater, NYFOS fosters community among artists and audiences. Each program entertains and educates in equal measure.

Founded by pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier in 1988, NYFOS continues to produce its series of thematic song programs, drawing together rarely-heard songs of all kinds, overriding traditional distinctions between musical genres, exploring the character and language of other cultures, and the personal voices of song composers and lyricists.

Since its founding, NYFOS has particularly celebrated American song. Among the many highlights is the double bill of one-act comic operas, Bastianello and Lucrezia, by John Musto and William Bolcom, both with libretti by Mark Campbell, commissioned and premiered by NYFOS in 2008 and recorded on Bridge Records. In addition to Bastianello and Lucrezia and the 2008 Bridge Records release of Spanish Love Songs with Joseph Kaiser and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, NYFOS has produced five recordings on the Koch label, including a Grammy Award-winning disc of Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles, and the Grammy-nominated recording of Ned Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen (also a NYFOS commission) on New World Records. This past season saw the release of Canción Amorosa, a CD of Spanish song-Basque, Catalan, Castilian, and Sephardic-on the GPR label, with soprano Corinne Winters accompanied by Steven Blier.

In November 2010, NYFOS debuted NYFOS Next, a mini-series for new songs, hosted by guest composers in intimate venues. The series is currently held at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.

NYFOS is passionate about nurturing the artistry and careers of young singers, and has developed training residencies around the country, including with The Juilliard School's Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts (now in its 12th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 9th year in March 2017); San Francisco Opera Center (over 18 years as of February 2016); Glimmerglass Opera (2008-2010); and its newest project, NYFOS@North Fork in Orient, NY.

NYFOS's concert series, touring programs, radio broadcasts, recordings, and educational activities continue to spark new interest in the creative possibilities of the song program, and have inspired the creation of thematic vocal series around the world.