New York Festival of Song
Piano & Voice
Now in its 38th 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’s ensemble 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 is a rotating ensemble of performers, including some of the biggest names in classical music and beyond. It 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 a million streams since the beginning of the year.
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 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 19th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 16th year in March 2024); 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.
The NYFOS ensemble’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.
Steven Blier was born in New York City and is the co-founder and artistic director of the New York Festival of Song (premiere season 1988-89) and has served as programmer/translator/pianist/arranger of more than 130 of its programs. He has been a recital accompanist for singers including Cecilia Bartoli, Jessye Norman, Wolfgang Holzmair, Renée Fleming, Samuel Ramey, Susan Graham, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Dwayne Croft, Paul Groves, Susanne Mentzer, June Anderson, Arleen Augér, Roberta Peters, and Kurt Ollmann, among others.
Blier has recorded on the Koch, New World, Nonesuch, Albany, RCA, and Musicmasters labels and won a Grammy Award in 1990 and was nominated for Grammy Awards in 1999 and 1989. His recorded repertoire includes works by Ives, Gershwin, Weill, Blitzstein, Busoni, Granados, Wolf, Kern, and Rorem (Evidence of Things Not Seen, premiere). He has given master classes around the U.S. in song repertoire, and has been a feature writer for Opera News magazine since 1996.
Blier has been guest faculty/recitalist at the Wolf Trap Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chautauqua Festival, and San Francisco Opera, and was a faculty member at the State University of New York—Purchase from 1986 to 1994 and Aspen Music Festival from 1978 to 1981. He holds a BA degree from Yale University, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He studied piano with Miriam Gideon, Alexander Farkas, Paul Jacobs, and Martin Isepp. ( The Julliard School)
French pianist and vocal coach Bénédicte Jourdois is a member of the Metropolitan Opera music staff and teaches and coaches at the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Juilliard. With Steven Blier, she co-directs the Schwab Vocal Rising Stars program at Caramoor. Jourdois has performed in numerous venues in Europe and in the U.S., including Alice Tully and Carnegie halls and the Kennedy Center. As a coach and pianist, she has worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Chicago Lyric Ryan Opera Center, Chicago Opera Theater, Pittsburgh Opera, Washington National Opera, Washington Concert Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Palm Beach Opera, Opera Saratoga, Rice University, Chautauqua Institution voice program, Castleton Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and Carnegie Hall’s SongStudio. She was previously a faculty member at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and at the Manhattan School of Music. Born in Paris, Jourdois holds degrees from the Conservatoire National de Region de Saint-Maur, the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Lyon, Mannes College, and Juilliard, and is a graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
