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Singers Come Home to NYFOS |
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| by Bruce-Michael Gelbert | |
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A FRIEND |
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photo by Joseph R. Saporito
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| Michael Barrett & Steven Blier |
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The New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), founded by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, its Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director respectively, opened its 22nd season, on October 13 at Merkin Concert Hall, with a program entitled "Where We Come From," in which 10 singers, closely identified with NYFOS, sang music of their literal, spiritual and musical homelands. The concert also served to introduce the NYFOS Artists Council, charged with being, as Blier put it, the company's "ambassadors to the world," and consisting of nine of the singers and James Martin (who withdrew from the evening, and is recovering from double pneumonia), Joseph Kaiser (who had scheduling conflicts), and Peter Kazaras. The brilliant Blier was at the piano for most of the evening, but was spelled or joined by his no-less-accomplished colleague Barrett for selected numbers.
The nonet of Council members-sopranos Amy Burton, Sari Gruber and Dina Kuznetsova, mezzo-sopranos Sasha Cooke and Kate Lindsey, tenors Paul Appleby and Benjamin Sosland, baritone William Sharp, and bass Matt Boehler-accompanied by Blier and conducted by Barrett, opened with Samuel Barber's setting of James Agee's "Sure on This Shining Night," in a hushed, ethereal rendition that fully captured the song's sense of wonder. In a swinging "Manhattan Hometown," from English musical "Peg," by David Heneker, the ensemble, plus baritone Carlton Ford, took an intimate, folksy look at the busy borough. Cooke infused "Take Me to the World," a lushly vocalized song of a department store mannequin come to life, from Stephen Sondheim's "Evening Primrose," with quietly touching yearning and brought the solo to a triumphant climax. Juilliard baritone Ford offered a polished performance of "Night Song," a searching Broadway nocturne, from Charles Strouse and Lee Adams' "Golden Boy," which originally had Sammy Davis, Jr. as its boxer protagonist. Blier and Barrett were both at the piano for Burton and Sharp's cheerful duet, written by George Gershwin, Arthur J. Jackson and B.G. DeSylva, and intended for "La-La Lucille!," of "Our Little Kitchenette," which our blithe gourmets would, we fear, scarcely find their way around.
Moscow-born Kuznetsova, with an affinity for Spanish music, brought childlike simplicity and sweetness indeed to Enrique Granados' "Mira que soy niña," which she followed with a seductive "No lloréis, ojuelos," Granados' setting of Lope de Vega's poem. Appleby's vibrant account of Heitor Villa-Lobos and E. Villaba Filho's "Samba clássico" proved a pulsating, patriotic paean to Brazil. Burton lent silvery sound to Francis Poulenc and Jean Anouilh's "Les chemins de l'amour," written for Yvonne Printemps, and made the waltz at once lilting and wrenching. Appleby and Ford harmonized, with such Puccinian ardor, on Ernesto Lecuona's "Como el arrullo de palmas," a Cuban song of Latin lovers limning their ideal woman, that they caused Blier to quip that, as a gay man, he'd been responsible, after all, for recruiting-singers to Latin music, at any rate.
Examining songs of the South, Boehler, deputizing for Martin, delivered a richly sung "Shenandoah," and Richmond-born Lindsey cleanly sang John Jacob Niles' adaptation of "He's Going Away" and made the tears evident behind the brave wistfulness. Backed by Appleby, Boehler, Sharp and Sosland, Lindsey proceeded to an ecstatic "At the Mardi Gras," from "Inside U.S.A.," written by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz for Beatrice Lillie, and confessed that, while she was not quite sure exactly what she did and with whom during Carnival season, she certainly did have fun doing it!
Born in Germany, but raised in America, Gruber chose music by Kurt Weill, who fled Nazi Germany for America, and, backed by Burton, Cooke, Kuznetsova and Lindsey, in the "Alabama-Song," from "Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny," written with Bertolt Brecht, made Jenny at once fittingly hard as nails and lyrical-but where was the "next pretty boy" verse?-and lamenting a love's absence in "Stay Well," from Weill and Maxwell Anderson's "Lost in the Stars," realized both the tenderness and longing in the song. In a pair of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky songs, Kuznetsova, without restraint, bemoaned a forthcoming forced marriage, to an unwanted and unloved suitor, in "Ja li v pole da ne travushka byla" ("Was I not a little blade of grass?"), to Ivan Surikov's poetry, keening and weeping in a wide range of vocal timbres, from limpid to plangent, and joined voices with Cooke, of Russian descent, for a turbulent "Minula Strast'" ("Passion is gone"-or is it?)-ah, that irresistible combination of soprano and mezzo!
Barrett, at the keyboard, presided over a group of German lieder. Appleby and Gruber dulcetly limned love and love lost in Franz Schubert nocturne "Licht und Liebe (Nachtgesang)," to Mattäus von Collin's poem. Cooke solemnly renounced society in a breathtaking "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," from Gustav Mahler's "Fünf [Friedrich] Rückertlieder." In refined tone, Sharp, with drive, expressed joy at returning home in Johannes Brahms' and Ludwig Tieck's "Wie froh und frisch mein Sinn sich hebt," from "Die schöne Magelone," and did so again, with Blier, in "Homeward Bound," from George and Ira Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band." In spouse John Musto's "Penelope's Song," Burton sang the blues and expressed the protagonist's ambivalence about Odysseus' now imminent return home after two decades. Appleby probed homesickness and deep feeling for the country in Paul Simon anthem "American Tune," and joined by Ford for Harry Revel and Noble Sissle's "Guiding Me Back Home," sang of home lyrically and affectionately, to a rocking rhythm.
For a subdued and mellifluous finale, the company, led by Barrett, saluted the lyric art itself in Edward Elgar's all but a cappella setting of Alfred Lord Tennyson's "There is Sweet Music," and for an encore, proffered as bel canto a rendition of "Hail Poetry," the ode from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance," as one is likely to hear, prefaced by the Pirate King's recitative "Although our dark career," sung by Boehler.
Following this auspicious opening night, NYFOS' season continues, at Merkin on November 17 and 19, with "Great American Songwriting Teams," considering the Gershwins, Dietz and Schwartz, Rodgers with both Hart and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Bock and Harnick, Kander and Ebb, Leiber and Stoller, Bolcom and Weinstein, and others, with Sylvia McNair, Mary Testa, Jason Graae, and Blier; at Juilliard, on January 13, 2010, with "Killer B's," not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but "American Song from Amy Beach to the Beach Boys," with Bernstein, Barber, Bolcom, Bowles, Blake, Beaser, and Burleigh in between; back at Merkin on February 16 and 18, for "The Voluptuous Muse," music of late-Romantics Nikolai Medtner, Karol Szymanowski, Erich Korngold and Richard Strauss, with Kuznetsova, Lindsey, Kaiser, Blier and Barrett; at Caramoor, in Katonah, New York, on March 13 and at Merkin on the 16th for "The Sweetest Path," a program of chansons by Gounod, Fauré, Bizet, Charbrier and others, with Charlotte Dobbs and other Caramoor Vocal Rising Stars, and Blier and Barrett; at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on April 10 for the NYFOS Annual Gala; and at Merkin, on May 4 and 6, for "The Newest Deal," a program of new American works, including Harold Meltzer's song cycle "Beautiful Ohio," written for Appleby, and Gabe Kahane's song cycle "Craigslistlieder," with Anne Carolyn-Bird, Andrew Garland, Blier and Barrett completing the roster of the evening's artists.
Free tickets for the Juilliard performance will be available at the Juilliard School box office at Lincoln Center after January 4. Tickets for the Merkin Hall performances are priced from $40 to 55, and can be purchased at the box office at 129 West 67th Street. Student tickets, at $15, can be obtained by calling NYFOS at 646/230-8380. Visit www.nyfos.org for further information.
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