William Bolcom and Joan Morris to Highlight NYFOS Season

William Bolcom and Joan Morris will appear at the opening concert of the New York Festival of Song, September 23 and 25 at the Kaufman Center’s Merkin Concert Hall. The program will celebrate the work of Bolcom and Leonard Bernstein, and also feature singers Sari Gruber, Rebecca Jo Loeb, Renée Tatum, Alex Mansoori, William Sharp, and Marc Webster, along with pianist sand NYFOS cofounders Steven Blier and Michael Barrett.

The NYFOS season at Merkin will continue with Fugitives (November 18 and 20), an evening of songs from the concert stage, the movies, Broadway, and Berlin’s cabarets that trace the varied fortunes of the gifted composers who fled destruction during Hitler’s rise to power. including Kurt Weill, Franz Schreker, Arnold Zemlinsky, Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Korngold, Hanns Eisler, Friedrich Hollaender, and Emmerich Kálmán.

It will continue on February 10 and 12 with Voices of the Jewish Diaspora, featuring works by Milhaud, Rubinstein, Berlin, Gershwin, and Bernstein; Songs of the Irish Poets (March 17), with the work of Thomas Moore, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Paul Muldoon set to music by Beethoven, Britten, Balfe, Barber and others; and The Welcome Shore (May 19 and 21). a hymn to rivers and oceans with music by Elgar, Fauré, Guastavino, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Coward, Viardot, and many others.

In addition, NYFOS will present a free concert on January 14 at the Peter Jay Sharp Auditorium at The Juilliard School entitled Latin Lovers: An Evening of Cuban and South American Song.

For tickets and information, call 212-501-3330, or online at www.kaufman-center.org.