Songfest Celebrates Seventeenth Annual Song Festival, 6/3-28

SongFest is a festival for singers and collaborative pianists, which covers all aspects of the art of song: musical interpretation, literary interpretation, and effective public presentation. Master classes are taught to singers and pianists by distinguished artists of international stature. Each master class focuses thematically on specific vocal repertoire, presenting and studying it in new and challenging contexts.

This year's distinguished faculty of professional performers, directors, composers, and master teachers includes pianists Margo Garrett, Graham Johnson, and Martin Katz; composers William Bolcom, Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, and John Musto; and singers Amy Burton, Gwen Coleman Detwiler, Melanie Emelio, D’Anna Fortunato, Audrey Luna, Joan Morris, Lisa Saffer, William Sharp, and Frances Young.

SongFest 2012 will, for the first time, be hosted at The Colburn School located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, neighboring the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the planned Broad Museum. The Festival will include a series of public recitals, including the inauguration of a Noon Concert Series in Thayer Hall. The performances will feature singers and pianists participating in the SongFest program and will feature imaginative programming of the art song repertoire. The format of the recitals is varied; it is meant to stimulate and involve the public so as to convey a deeper understanding of the vast repertoire of art song and its contributions to our cultural enrichment and every day lives.
SongFest strives to promote American composers and their music by inviting living American composers to work as “composers-in residence” as well as commissioning new works of music. SongFest, with generous support from the Sorel Organization, has commissioned 2012 composer-in-residence William Bolcom to write a song for voice and piano to be premiered at SongFest 2012. Bolcom is a Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning composer whose prolific catalog of music contains opera, songs, symphonies, concertos, and much more. The song, a setting of Jane Kenyon’s poem, Gettysburg: July 1, 1863, will be premiered by SongFest 2012 and 2011 Marc and Eva Stern Fellow, Nathan Wyatt, and Lucas Wong, pianist.

Following is the SongFest 2012 concert schedule. All concerts are free and open to the public. Updated concert and class information can be found at www.songfest.us.