NYFOS and Juilliard to Present HARRY, HOAGY, AND HAROLD, 1/13 & 17

The New York Festival of Song marks its eleventh annual co-presentation with Juilliard's Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts with a new program titled HARRY, HOAGY, and HAROLD.

Two performances take place in January: the first on Wednesday, January 13, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at The Juilliard School; the second presented by the Five Boroughs Music Festival on Sunday, January 17, 2015 at 3:00 p.m. at Flushing Town Hall in Queens.

The program pays tribute to three iconic American songwriters: Harry Warren("Cheerful Little Earful," "At Last"), Hoagy Carmichael ("The Nearness of You," "Skylark"), and Harold Arlen ("It's a New World," "That Old Black Magic"). The trio defined a generation with countless songs from the 1930's, 40's, and 50's entering the canon of the American songbook.

Pianist and arranger Steven Blier, a member of Juilliard's faculty and artistic director of NYFOS, performs with the singers from Juilliard's Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts.

The evening features sopranos Mikaela Bennett, and Christine Price; mezzo-sopranos Amanda Lynn Bottoms and Kelsey Lauritano; tenors Samuel Levine and Gerard Schneider; and baritone Dimitri Katotakis.

Stage direction is by Mary Birnbaum, and choreography is by Adam Cates. The singers have been coached by guest coach Mary Testa with musical assistance by Christopher Reynolds.

Tickets to the performance at The Juilliard School are $20 for the public, $10 for students, and free for Juilliard students, faculty, and staff. They are available for purchase online starting December 16 at http://events.juilliard.edu or in person at The Juilliard School Box Office, located in the lobby of Juilliard at 155 West 65th Street.

Tickets to the performance with the Five Boroughs Music Festival are $25 for the general public; $15 for students; $15 for Flushing town hall members; and are available for purchase online at http://5bmf.org/buy-tickets/.

NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier: "What a pleasure to introduce the songs of Harry Warren, Hoagy Carmichael, and Harold Arlen to the next generation, who have embraced them with a rare kind of fervor. Right now, we are still in the preliminary stages of rehearsal. Yet I feel how Arlen, Carmichael, and Warren are already taking my cast of singers on a magic carpet ride, spurring them on to new flights of passion and imagination. That old black magic has us in its spell, the perfect antidote to the rigors of a New York winter."

THE PROGRAM:

Mikaela Bennett, soprano; Christine Price, soprano
Amanda Lynn Bottoms, mezzo-soprano; Kelsey Lauritano, mezzo-soprano
Samuel Levine, tenor; Gerard Schneider, tenor
Dimitri Katotakis, baritone

Steven Blier, pianist and arranger; Mary Birnbaum, stage director
Adam Cates, choreographer; Christopher Reynolds, assistant pianist
Mary Testa, guest coach

Harry Warren (1893-1981)
Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)
Harold Arlen (1905-1986)

OVERTURE: "Over the Rainbow" (Arlen/Harburg) from The Wizard of Oz, 1939
"The Old Music Master" (Carmichael/Mercer) from True to Life, 1943
"Sleepin' Bee" (Arlen/Capote) from House of Flowers, 1954
"Old Buttermilk Sky" (Carmichael/Brooks) from Canyon Passage, 1946
"Last Night When We Were Young" (Arlen/Harburg) from Metropolitan, 1935
"Two Ladies in de Shade of de Banana Tree" (Arlen/Capote)
from House of Flowers
"It's A New World" (Arlen/Gershwin) from A Star Is Born, 1954
"I'm Going Shopping with You" (Warren/Dubin) from Dames, 1934
"Dancing Partner" (Arlen/Gershwin) written for A Star Is Born, 1954
"Old Man Harlem" (Carmichael/Vallée), 1930's
"Cheerful Little Earful" (Warren/Gershwin/Rose) from Sweet and Low, 1930

INTERMISSION

Entr'acte: "Jeepers Creepers" (Warren/Mercer) from Going Places, 1938
"Evelina" (Arlen/Harburg) from Bloomer Girl, 1944
"Hard to Replace" (Warren/Gershwin) from The Barkleys of Broadway, 1949
"That Old Black Magic" (Arlen/Mercer) from Star Spangled Rhythm, 1942
"Skylark" (Carmichael/Mercer), 1941
"Buds Won't Bud" (Arlen/Harburg), written in 1940, used in Cairo, 1942
"I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi (I Like You Very Much)" (Warren/Gordon)
from That Night in Rio, 1941
"When I Love, I Love" (Warren/Gordon) from Weekend in Havana, 1941
"At Last" (Warren/Gordon) from Orchestra Wives, 1941
"Sleep Peaceful, Mr. Used-to-Be" (Arlen/Mercer) from St. Louis Woman
"The Nearness of You" (Carmichael/Washington), 1940
"In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (Carmichael/Mercer)
from Here Comes the Groom, 1951

NYFOS EMERGING ARTISTS:

the next generation

Through its NYFOS Emerging Artists series, NYFOS continues its tradition of cultivating budding talent with residencies and performances. During each residency, NYFOS Emerging Artists trains young vocalists in programming and translation, presentation and production, research and musical style. In deep artistic collaboration with NYFOS's artistic directors Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, the singers are encouraged to engage audiences with directness, subtlety, and passion.

A hallmark of NYFOS, Emerging Artists has become one of NYFOS's greatest sources of energy. Some of the program's distinguished alumni include Julia Bullock, Corinne Winters, Joélle Harvey, Paul Appleby, John Brancy, Andrew Owens, Jennifer Zetlan, Jane Archibald, Elizabeth Caballero, and Elza van den Heever.

This season's Emerging Artists features NYFOS's 11th annual concert in collaboration with The Juilliard School Vocal Department with a program entitled Harry, Hoagy, and Harold on January 13, 2016. Emerging Artists also returns for its 8th residency with Caramoor's Terrance W. Schwab Vocal Rising Stars program March 7-12, 2016 with a show called At Home, which NYFOS then introduces to its Mainstage series on March 13, 2016.

Now in its 28th 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. Founded by pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier in 1988, NYFOS continues to produce NYFOS MAINSTAGE, its flagship series of thematic song programs, drawing together rarely-heard songs of all kinds, overriding traditional distinctions between classical and popular performance genres, and exploring the character and language of other cultures. Since its founding NYFOS has particularly celebrated the wide spectrum of American music. Among many highlights is the double bill of one-act comic operas, Bastianello by John Musto and Lucrezia by William Bolcom, both with libretti by Mark Campbell, commissioned and premiered by NYFOS in 2008 and recorded on Bridge Records.

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. NYFOS's discography also includes Spanish Love Songs with Joseph Kaiser and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson on Bridge Records. Its recently released CD on the GPR label, Canción amorosa, also focuses on Spanish song-Basque, Catalan, Castilian, and Sephardic-with soprano Corinne Winters accompanied by Steven Blier.

In 2010, NYFOS launched NYFOS NEXT, a series for new songs, hosted by guest composers in intimate venues. This season the series returns as a mini-festival during the month of February 2016 with all concerts presented at OPERA America's National Opera Center. In the fall of 2014, NYFOS officially introduced its unamplified cabaret series NYFOS AFTER HOURS at HENRY's Restaurant on the Upper West Side, drawing full houses and superlative voices accompanied by Blier at the piano.

NYFOS is passionate about nurturing the artistry and careers of young singers and through its NYFOS EMERGING ARTISTS program has developed professional training residencies around the country, including The Juilliard School's Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts (now in its 11th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 8th year in March 2016); San Francisco Opera Center (over 15 years as of March 2014); Glimmerglass Opera (2008-2010); and its newest project, NYFOS@North Fork in Orient, NY (3 years).

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.