Kaufman Center Presents VOICES OF THE JEWISH DIASPORA

Kaufman Center and New York Festival of Song (NYFOS, www.nyfos.org), will present Voices of the Jewish Diaspora on Tuesday and Thursday, February 10 and 12, at 8 PM at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center. It is the third subscription program this season for the New York Festival of Song, whose 2008 CD Spanish Love Songs, featuring Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Joseph Kaiser, Steven Blier and Michael Barrett (Bridge Records) was named one of the "Best Of the Year" by Opera News. The program features songs in many languages celebrating the culturally diverse Jewish communities that flourished as the tribes of Israel spread out across the globe: Sephardic melodies arranged by Roberto Sierra; Second Avenue specialties by Irving Berlin and Abraham Ellstein; art songs by Ravel and Mahler; plus music by Gershwin, Bernstein, and Harold Rome.

The cast of Voices of the Jewish Diaspora features tenor and Broadway actor Steven Goldstein, a Founding Member of the Atlantic Theater Company, most recently featured there in The Voysey Inheritance, and whose Broadway/Off-Broadway credits include Our Town, Boys' Life (Lincoln Center Theater), and Sweet Adeline (Encores!) at City Center; soprano Dina Kuznetsova, of the San Francisco Opera, Glyndebourne Festival and Lyric Opera of Chicago, and featured in NYFOS's Obsession à la Russe last season; mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham, an internationally acclaimed Carmen and guest star with the New York City Opera, the Berlin State Opera and such orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim; a string q

uartet, TBA; and NYFOS Co-Founders and Artistic Directors Steven Blier and Michael Barrett as pianist/hosts (bios below).

Tickets for Diaspora are $40-55, and are available at (212) 501-3330 or www.kaufman-center.org . Merkin Concert Hall is at 129 West 67th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues, New York, NY 10023. There are also half-priced student tickets, as available, one half-hour before curtain, and a limited number of $15 student tickets are available in advance from New York Festival of Song at (646) 230-8380.

Upcoming NYFOS concerts at Merkin Concert Hall include Songs of the Irish Poets on March 17 and The Welcome Shore (songs of rivers and oceans) on May 19 and 21. Carried Away (with the lyrics of Comden and Green), the NYFOS Annual Gala will be presented at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on April 14.

PROGRAM FOR VOICES OF THE JEWISH DIASPORA

Piccola Serenata Leonard Bernstein
Des Antonius von Padua Fischpre Gustav Mahler
Gelb rollt mir zu Füssen, from Twelve Persian Songs Anton Rubenstein
From Songs from the Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79 Dmitri Shostakovich
1. Lament over the death of a small child
2. The Thoughtful Mother and Aunt
6. The Forsaken Father
7. Lullaby in Time of Need
11. i Linked Arms with my Husband
From Four Children's Songs, Op. 35
Ha Geshem (The Rain) Paul Ruach
Ben Chaim (Wind)
Meyerke mayn Suhn, from Sept chants populaires Maurice Ravel
Kaddisch, from Deux mélodies hébraïques
Papir Iz Doch Vays Traditional
Volt Majn Tate Rajch Geven Lazar Weiner
Zog Nit Keyn Mol Hirsch Glick
Ulai laze yihie li omet Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
From Songs from the Diaspora Roberto Sierra
1. De las mares altas
2. Échate a la mar y alcançalo
4. Mi suegra la negra
5. Caminí por altas torres
7. La Serena
Sadie Salome (Go Home) Irving Berlin and Edgar Leslie
Meydele Abraham Ellstein
Mene, Mene,Tekel, from Pins and Needles Harold Rome
(Program subject to change)

NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier, called by The New York Times "A national treasure when it comes to the art of song," also enjoys an eminent career as an accompanist and vocal coach. Among the many artists he has partnered in recital are Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Jessye Norman and Samuel Ramey. He has performed throughout North America and Europe, including recitals at Carnegie Hall, La Scala, Milan, and a Live From Lincoln Center telecast. Mr. Blier co-founded the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) in 1988 with Michael Barrett. Since the Festival's inception he has programmed, performed, translated and annotated over one hundred vocal recitals with repertoire spanning the entire range of song. His discography includes the premiere recording of Leonard Bernsteins Arias and Barcarolles (Koch International), which won a Grammy Award; the NYFOS discs of Blitzstein, Gershwin, and German Lieder (Unquiet Peace); Gershwin's Lady Be Good! (Nonesuch Records); four albums of songs by Charles Ives in partnership with baritone William Sharp (Albany Records); first recordings of music by Busoni and Borodin with cellist Dorothy Lawson (Koch International); and Spanish Love Songs with Joseph Kaiser and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Bridge Records). This season, Bridge will release the original cast recording of Bastianello / Lucrezia, the acclaimed John Musto and WIlliam Bolcom operas with libretti by Mark Campbell, commissioned and premiered by NYFOS.

Associate Artistic Director Michael Barrett is also the CEO of Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and General Director of the Caramoor International Music Festival. In 1992 Mr. Barrett and his wife Leslie Tomkins founded The Moab Music Festival in Utah, for which he serves as music director. He has conducted major orchestras here and abroad in the symphonic, operatic, and dance repertoire, and is the former director of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y. Mr. Barrett has conducted and played premieres by Bernstein, Blitzstein, Bolcom, Kernis, Sellars, Harrison, Takemitsu, Del Tredici and John Corigliano.

New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) was founded in 1988 by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett. NYFOS is dedicated to creating intimate song concerts of great beauty, humor and originality, combining music, poetry, and history to entertain, educate and create community among audiences and performers. With a far-ranging repertoire of art songs, concert works and theater pieces, its thematic recitals have included programs from Brahms to the Beatles, from the nineteenth-century salons of Paris to Tin Pan Alley, from Russian art song to Argentine tangos, from sixteenth-century lute songs to new music. NYFOS particularly celebrates American song literature and culture, and specializes in premiering and commissioning new American works.

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