SongFest is honored to announce new faculty for 2016: internationally known pedagogues baritone William McGraw of the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, soprano Karen Holvik of the New England Conservatory, and voice and body work teacher John Norris of the Berlin Staatsoper studio and Bavarian State Opera Studio.

If you were at Carnegie Hall yesterday & were touched by the music & poetry, please take action now to end violence against women and girls. scheherazadeinitiative.org/make-a-donation/ Photo © Chris Lee, used with permission.

From a revamped logo and release of our first CD under the newly minted SongFest Records, to welcoming new faculty baritone William McGraw, soprano Karen Holvik, and composers William Bolcom and John Harbison to our roster of distinguished artist-teachers and pedagogues, as well as concerts like the three part series An Encyclopedia of Song A - Z curated and coached by Graham Johnson, this season is not to be missed!

Our alumni are making beautiful music across the United States and internationally. Recent graduate successes include:

Clarissa Lyons (Stern Fellow '10) has been selected to join the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera.

Abigail Levis ('08) has been selected to join the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at LA Opera

Ian Mcuen (Stern Fellow '12) has joined the roster of ADA artist management.

The Ziering-Conlon Initiative at the Colburn School will hold its first-ever national Young Artist Competition during the fall of 2015. The focus will be on Art Song, with a public final round hosted by James Conlon in Zipper Hall on Sunday, December 6, 2015. Cash prizes totaling $12,000 will be distributed. All finalists will receive a cash prize, with $5,000 and a fully underwritten residency at SongFest 2016 going to the first prize winner.

Monday, October 19th @ 7:30pm in Merkin Concert Hall NYC. Three Songfest alumni will be featured in the Joy in Singing 2015 Artist Award Recital: baritone Steven Eddy, soprano Lilla Heinrich Szász, and pianist Dimitri Dover.

For more information and tickets: http://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/joy-in-singing-2015-artist-award-recital/

"...This town has never been much of a capital of the art song. SongFest 2015 aims to change all that, if only for a month."

"...The festival has become increasingly impressive...."

"...the performers...sounded amazing..."

Thank you for an incredible SongFest 2015! Check back in September for news about our 20th anniversary festival in 2016!

SongFest mourns the loss of a great lady, author, music lover, and angel of SongFest. The 2015 festival will be dedicated to the beloved memory of Marcia Brown, and in gratitude and homage to her partner Janet Loranger who is still with us today.  

Grammy award-winning composer Libby Larsen will premiere her new work, The Birth Song Cycle, at SongFest 2015 this summer! Sopranos Gwen Coleman Detwiler and Audrey Luna, for whom the work was commissioned, will collaborate with internationally-known pianist Lydia Brown in performing this cutting edge composition, giving fresh and current perspective on this powerful subject.

SongFest is thrilled to announce two WORLD PREMIERES for the summer of 2015 to be presented by festival participants chosen through national auditions.

Anne LeBaron has been chosen to write the 2015 Sorel Organization American Song Commission: a duet for female and male voice with piano. More details about the piece to come soon!

Additionally, SongFest is thrilled to present the world premiere of “Shadow Memory” a work for soprano and piano by James Primosch (http://jamesprimosch.com/) with text by best selling L.A. author Susan Orlean (http://www.susanorlean.com).

7 reasons why the X Factor remains elusive

If we’re going to create a step-by-step guide to acquire something, first we have to define what that thing is, but before we can do that, we need to establish why this is so important and why it hasn’t been done before. i.e. if this “X Factor” is so important, why is it not a serious part of most curriculums or taught in any structured course? A few reasons: ....

A renowned American tenor, John Aler is one of the most acclaimed and admired singers on the international stage.  A consummate artist, he has been a frequent performer with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.  He has sung in Europe with the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Orchestre Nationale de France, and the BBC Symphony, among many others, appearing with the world’s most respected conductors, including James Conlon, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Kurt Masur, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simon Rattle, Michael Tilson Thomas, Herbert Blomstedt, and Leonard Slatkin, to name a few.  He has performed at the major opera houses of the world, including the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Salzburg, Hamburg, Geneva, Madrid, and Brussels, as well as the New York City Opera, the Washington Opera, and Santa Fe.  He is a regular performer at the major American summer festivals, including Ravinia, Aspen, Chautauqua, Newport, and Grant Park.

Rediscovering Vocal Gems of the Early Twentieth Century

SongFest announces a collaboration with The OREL Foundation to present SongFest fellows in a recital dedicated to composers whose music was suppressed during the Nazi Regime. The program will be developed in consultation with James Conlon and The Ziering-Conlon Initiative at The Colburn School. This music holds a special significance for Los Angeles as many of these composers, such as Hanns Eisler, Erich Korngold, Ernst Toch and Erich Zeisl, emigrated to the area and profoundly influenced Southern California's musical culture.

For more information, please visit The OREL Foundation [orelfoundation.org], the most resourceful website about these composers and their music in the English language.

Young Artist Program Director Matthew Morris' "One method to learn a song from brand new to riveting performance"

Much of the best in life and art seems to happen spontaneously, but often if we look underneath the apparent magic happenstance, we find structure, hard work, determination, and diligence staring back at us. Here is one method of many possible methods to learn a song from cracking open the score to a complete dynamic and engaging performance. The point isn't that this has to be the way for anyone to learn a song, but rather that it should spark a conversation with you and your teachers and colleagues about how you can create a structure of learning that works best for you. Give yourself a chance to have one of those spontaneous magical moments in your performance that can only happen if you've done "the work" ahead of time. A kite has to be tethered to fly.