New York Festival of Song & Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center in collaboration with Opera Hispánica PRESENT

Opera Hispánica continues its 2021/2022 season with a recital produced in collaboration with the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), and co-presented by Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center and New York Festival of Song.  Buenos Aires, Then and Now comes to Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center on Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 8:00pm. The concert features soprano Nicoletta Berry, bass-baritone Federico De Michelis, soprano Raquel González with pianist Shawn Chang and NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier serving as pianist and host. 

All NYFOS programming is funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Attendees at Merkin Hall are currently required to wear masks and provide proof of vaccination. Read their full policy here.

About New York Festival of Song

Now in its 34th 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 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 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,  NYFOS has a rich discography including a Grammy Award-winning disc of Leonard 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 order to bring more of its music — captured both in live performance and in the studio — to audiences worldwide, NYFOS launched its in-house label, NYFOS Records, in 2021. Its first album, From Rags to Riches, featuring Stephanie Blythe, William Burden, and Steven Blier, is slated for release in January 2022.  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, and now the Ann Goodman Recital Hall at Kaufman Music Center.

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 16th year); Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (its 14th year in March 2022); 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.

NYFOS’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.