New York Festival Of Song to Present 15th Annual A GOYISHE CHRISTMAS TO YOU!

New York Festival of Song will present its annual holiday show, A Goyishe Christmas to You! on Tuesday, December 17, 2024 at 7:00 p.m. at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. The program features favorite Yuletide tunes (performed with a twist) and specialty material by Jewish composers, sung by soprano Lauren Worsham, mezzo-sopranos Donna Breitzer and Rebecca Jo Loeb, tenor Alex Mansoori, baritone Joshua Jeremiah, and Cantor Joshua Breitzer. Steven Blier joins as pianist and host, alongside clarinetist Alan R. Kay.

Now in its 15th year, A Goyishe Christmas to You! consists of Yuletide songs written by Jewish composers, from the wickedly funny to the meltingly beautiful. The show includes classics like Irving Berlin's White Christmas as well as Yiddish versions of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Baby, It's Cold Outside-a popular seasonal songbook packed with contributions by Jewish songwriters on behalf of their gentile counterparts.

Ahead of this holiday performance on Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, NYFOS co-presents My Brother's Keeper, a story of brotherly love, caretaking, and community among Black men in America conceived and co-artistic directed by baritone Justin Austin. With performances of art song, soul, gospel, and opera, My Brother's Keeper features the NYFOS debut of Grammy Award-winning baritone Will Liverman alongside a stellar team of Black American male singers, including long-time NYFOS collaborator tenor Joshua Blue, winner of the 2022 YCA Susan Wadsworth International Auditions bass-baritone Joseph Parrish, rising bass-baritone Alan Williams (also a NYFOS debut), "rock-solid singer" (The Washington Post) baritone Jorell Williams, and young American tenor Chaz'men Williams-Ali, alongside NYFOS's own Artistic Director, Steven Blier.

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.

The NYFOS Mainstage and the NYFOS Next series are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Concert Information:

A Goyishe Christmas to You!
New York Festival of Song
Tuesday, December 17, 2024 at 7:00 p.m.
Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (CBST) | 130 West 30th Street | New York, NY 10001
Tickets: $45; Student tickets $10
Link: https://nyfos.org/goyishe-christmas/

Selections to include:
Howard Levitsky/Marc Miller: Candle in My Window
Frank Loesser: Baby, It's Cold Outside
David Javerbaum/Adam Schlesinger: Can I interest you in Hanukkah?
Felix Bernard/Dick Smith: Winter Wonderland
Jay Livingston/Ray Evans: Silver Bells
JOHNNY MARKS: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Yiddish arr. by Kugelplex/Joshua Breitzer)
Frank Loesser: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
Joan Javits/PHIL and TONY SPRINGER/R.J. LOEB: Santa Zaydee
ROY ZIMMERMAN: Don't Let Gramma Cook Christmas Dinner
MEL TORMÉ/TORMÉ and WELLS: The Christmas Song ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire") (new lyrics by Adam Gopnik)
David Friedman: My Simple Christmas Wish
Irving Berlin: White Christmas
JOHNNY MARKS: Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

Artists:
Lauren Worsham, soprano
Donna Breitzer, mezzo-soprano
Rebecca Jo Loeb, mezzo-soprano
Alex Mansoori, tenor
Joshua Jeremiah, baritone
Cantor Joshua Breitzer
Steven Blier, piano
Alan R. Kay, clarinet

About New York Festival of Song
Now in its 37th 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. Since then, NYFOS Records has released Paul Bowles's A Picnic Cantata (2022) featuring the vocal talent of sopranos Amy Owens and Chelsea Shephard, mezzo-sopranos Amanda Lynn Bottoms and Naomi Louisa O'Connell, and percussionist Barry Centanni, together with NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier and co-founder Michael Barrett on piano; Black & Blue (2023), the debut solo album of British-American tenor Joshua Blue performing together with Steven Blier on piano; Mi País: Songs of Argentina (2023) featuring bass-baritone Federico De Michelis and pianist and Steven Blier; and NYFOS Records: The Singles, Vol. 1 (2024), a compilation of guest artists performing together with Steven Blier, spanning over 20 years of memorable moments and voices. NYFOS Records has reached rapidly growing audiences in over 100 countries, with well over 2.5 million streams to date.

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 17th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 17th year in March 2025); 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.

About Steven Blier
Steven Blier is the Artistic Director of the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), which he co-founded in 1988 with Michael Barrett. Since the Festival's inception, he has programmed, performed, translated and annotated more than 150 vocal recitals with repertoire spanning the entire range of American song, art song from Schubert to Szymanowski, and popular song from early vaudeville to Lennon-McCartney. NYFOS has also made in-depth explorations of music from Spain, Latin America, Scandinavia and Russia. New York Magazine gave NYFOS its award for Best Classical Programming, while Opera News proclaimed Blier "the coolest dude in town" and in December 2014, Musical America included him as one of 30 top industry professionals in their feature article, "Profiles in Courage."

Mr. Blier enjoys an eminent career as an accompanist and vocal coach. His recital partners have included Michael Spyres, Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Samuel Ramey, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Susan Graham, Jessye Norman, and José van Dam, in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to La Scala. He is also on the faculty of The Juilliard School and has been active in encouraging young recitalists at summer programs, including the Wolf Trap Opera Company, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, Santa Fe Opera, and the San Francisco Opera Center. Many of his former students, including Julia Bullock, Stephanie Blythe, Sasha Cooke, Paul Appleby, Dina Kuznetsova, Corinne Winters, and Kate Lindsey, have gone on to be valued recital colleagues and sought-after stars on the opera and concert stage. In keeping the traditions of American music alive, he has brought back to the stage many of the rarely heard songs of George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Kurt Weill and Cole Porter. He has also played ragtime, blues and stride piano evenings with John Musto. A champion of American art song, he has premiered works of John Corigliano, Paul Moravec, Ned Rorem, William Bolcom, Mark Adamo, John Musto, Richard Danielpour, Tobias Picker, Robert Beaser, Lowell Liebermann, Harold Meltzer, and Lee Hoiby, many of which were commissioned by NYFOS.

Mr. Blier's extensive discography includes the premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein's Arias and Barcarolles (Koch International), which won a Grammy Award; Spanish Love Songs (Bridge Records), recorded live at the Caramoor International Music Festival with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Joseph Kaiser, and Michael Barrett; the world premiere recording of Bastianello (John Musto) and Lucrezia (William Bolcom), a double bill of one-act comic operas set to librettos by Mark Campbell; and Quiet Please, an album of jazz standards with vocalist Darius de Haas, and Canción amorosa, a CD of Spanish songs with soprano Corinne Winters. His latest releases for NYFOS Records include Black & Blue (2023), with British-American tenor Joshua Blue; Mi País: Songs of Argentina (2023) with bass-baritone Federico De Michelis; and NYFOS Records: The Singles, Vol. 1 (2024), a compilation of guest artists performing together with Steven Blier, spanning over 20 years of memorable moments and voices.

A native New Yorker, he received a Bachelor's Degree with Honors in English Literature at Yale University, where he studied piano with Alexander Farkas. He completed his musical studies in New York with Martin Isepp and Paul Jacobs. Mr. Blier is a Yamaha Artist.

Photo credit: Cherylynn Tsushima