New York Festival Of Song Continues Mainstage Series At Kaufman Music Center With KABARETT, November 16

New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, continues its 2022-23 Mainstage Series with KABARETT on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 8:00pm. The program highlights songs from Berlin's fabled nightspots during the Weimar era, featuring music by Hollaender, Spoliansky, Bienert, Tucholsky, Eisler, and others. Soprano Sari Gruber, mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O'Connell, and baritone Justin Austin join Mr. Blier at the piano.

Berlin was a hotbed of cabaret nightlife in the 1920s. These nightclubs became the artistic home for some of Germany's sharpest composers and lyricists, who supplied songs satirizing the tumult of the era. As Europe recovered from the ravages of the First World War, everything was in flux-politics, sexuality, psychology, and science. All of it became fodder for a brilliant repertoire of cabaret songs, whose ironic wit speaks to our current times with uncanny insight. Kabarett will be sung in both the original German and in English translations by Jeremy Lawrence.

"The issues they deal with-the vicissitudes of sexuality and gender, the loneliness and the dazzle of city life, the menace of political despots-could have been ripped from today's headlines," said Mr. Blier on curating the program. "The songs have humor, grit, and political insight."

"There is something delicious about performing cabaret of the Weimar era: brilliant, incisive text and good tunes with enough room left around the edges for performers to leave their own mark on it," said Ms. O'Connell. "Reading through songs set to Tucholsky's writing at the Deutsches Literatur Archiv in Marbach, I was surprised at how the razor-sharp observations of 100 years ago feel eerily appropriate today, as we watch our little world repeat itself. I am looking forward to this program immensely."

NYFOS' current 35th season, which also marks Mr. Blier's 50th year as a professional musician, is devoted to the idea of resilience. NYFOS' 2022-23 season also includes: the 12th rendition of its NYFOS Next Festival on October 16, 2022 at 3:00pm and October 23, 2022 at 3:00pm at the Rubin Museum of Art's Theater, curated by pianist Nathaniel LaNasa; Amor on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 8:00pm with mezzo-sopranos Lucia Bradford and Kate Lindsey, bass-baritone Federico De Michelis, and others to be announced, together with pianist Steven Blier; and Mediterranean on Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 8:00pm, featuring Caramoor's 2023 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars with pianists Steven Blier and Bénédicte Jourdois.

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Concert Information

Kabarett
November 16, 2022 at 8:00pm
Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center
129 West 67th Street | New York, NY
Link: https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/new-york-festival-of-song-kabarett/

Sari Gruber, soprano
Naomi Louisa O'Connell, mezzo-soprano
Justin Austin, baritone
Steven Blier, piano

Program to include:

Spoliansky-Schiffer: It's All a Swindle
Bienert-Tucholsky: Nur das
Bienert-Tucholsky: Augen in der Großstadt
Spoliansky-Schiffer: Maskulinum-Femininum
Bienert-Tucholsky: Die Frau spricht
Bienert-Tucholsky: Die Dame mit'n Avec
Hollaender: Ich bin vom Kopf bis Fuss
Hollaender: 'Raus mit den Männern
Waxman: Ich hab so was im Blut
Fall-Beda: Was hast du für Gefühl, Moritz?
Neumann: Ein Neandertaler
Eisler: Rosen auf den Weg gestreut
Eisler: Der Graben (Eisler)

All NYFOS programming is funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

NYFOS Mainstage is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Tickets:
Single tickets are available at $20 to $70.

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Now in its 35th 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. In 2014, Canción Amorosa, a CD of Spanish song-Basque, Catalan, Castilian, and Sephardic-was released on the GPR label, with soprano Corinne Winters accompanied by Steven Blier.

Their latest endeavor is NYFOS Records, which released its first album (From Rags to Riches, with Stephanie Blythe and William Burden) in January of 2022. They also issue a monthly single, with archival performances by artists such as Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Bernarda Fink, and newly recorded songs by Joshua Blue and Sasha Cooke. NYFOS Records has reached rapidly growing audiences in over 100 countries, with well over 110,000 plays since its inception in November of 2021.

In November 2010, NYFOS debuted NYFOS Next, a mini-series for new songs, hosted by guest composers in intimate venues, including OPERA America's National Opera Center, National Sawdust, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the Ann Goodman Recital Hall at Kaufman Music Center, and now the Rubin Museum in Chelsea.

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 16th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 14th year in March 2022); San Francisco Opera Center (over 20 years as of February 2018); 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.