“Ten years ago, it wasn’t clear that music lovers sought a New York Festival of Song. At that time, vocal recitals were regarded as the terminal patients in the already quarantined world of classical music.”
Steven Blier penned these words in 1998, looking back on 10 years of work as the artistic director of the New York Festival of Song, an organization he co-founded with Michael Barrett in 1988. Now, just two years shy of its 20th anniversary, NYFOS continues to enjoy tremendous success championing and revitalizing the song recital.
NYFOS owes much of its success to the varied and exciting repertoire Steven Blier programs. What’s more, each recital incorporates a variety of singers, making NYFOS recitals truly unique. As Anne Midgette of the New York Times put it, “For Mr. Blier, communication is the whole point of the exercise. The festival is built on the democratic premise that all songs—from Brahms to Broadway to the Beatles—are created equal. In place of the formality of the traditional recital, the festival offers groups of good young singers in smart, offbeat programs, each organized around a theme …”
Working as artistic director for NYFOS would certainly be sufficient to occupy all of Mr. Blier’s time—but this doesn’t stop him from giving to the musical community in a variety of other ways. In addition to private coachings, he also spends at least 10 hours a week coaching Juilliard voice students. Also, you may have heard his voice during intermission on the Metropolitan Opera Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts.
Mr. Blier’s extensive discography includes the Grammy Award-winning recording of Leonard Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles. He also remains committed to young singers, working with singers at Wolf Trap and Chautauqua, and recently bringing NYFOS out to San Francisco, in an all-Spanish recital with members of the San Francisco Opera Center.
The morning after a sold-out NYFOS gala, CS caught up with Mr. Blier, the 2006 Classical Singer Coach of the Year.
How did you get interested in music?
I gravitated to it very young. I had a little toy xylophone when I was a baby. When I went to nursery school, I saw the piano. I looked at it and I went, “This is just like my xylophone.” So I went to the piano. People said it was “an act of genius”—this child sort of spontaneously playing the piano—but believe me, it was nothing of the kind. For me, I had been practicing since I was born! Playing the piano seemed a natural extension of something I already knew how to do.
When did you think you wanted to have a career as a musician?
It was just a growing idea through my childhood, through my teen years, and through my college years. I was never in a class play—I played for the class play. I was always making music. I did not have a particularly strong technique as a solo pianist, so I think no one really thought, “He’s going to have a career in piano.” I was always the one who could play with other people very easily.
Where did you go to college?
I went to Yale and majored in English.
And then you went from English to music?
No, from music to English as a refuge, just to get through Yale, and then back to music. I did not like the music major very much—and they didn’t like me very much.
You are the artistic director and cofounder of the New York Forum of Song. How did this organization come about?
I met Michael Barrett in 1985. He needed an extra pianist on a [Marc] Blitzstein project. It was a lot of fun working with him [Barrett] and we became very good friends. Then I stayed in Michael’s circle of friends. He knew a lot of people and was very well connected. He had a much larger sense of the world than I did. When you’re an accompanist you just kind of think, “When’s my next audition? What voice lesson do I have to be at? What insults will be hurled at me unfairly?”
Michael had seen the musical world from a much higher vantage point than I. He had a friend named B.C. Vermeersch, who [runs] the Greenwich House Music School. B.C. wanted to get their little 100-seat concert hall on the map, and asked Michael to do some concerts there. Michael called me, and we did three vocal recitals. They were fun! B.C. liked them and said, “Do you want to do more?” And I said, “Yes—but I don’t want to do a series of vocal recitals.”
The same year I met Michael, I also met Graham Johnson. I was on tour in Israel and so was Graham, and I saw the Songmaker’s Almanac in action and thought, “Now that is a recital!” He didn’t have great singers with him, but the programs were really interesting, and very stimulating and meaningful. I had played a lot of vocal recitals by then, community concert stuff. It felt like everyone was going through the motions. [Songmaker’s Almanac] was not that. It was really vital.
So we decided to do a series of thematic recitals, à la the Songmaker’s Almanac. Joe Machlis had given Michael Barrett a thousand dollars and said, “Go do something interesting.” That paid for our flyer. We did everything by hand—and it was a complete life-changer. I had never been in charge of anything before. I’d been an accompanist, you know. I’d never been to graduate school. I had plenty of music in my background, of course, but I didn’t have a graduate degree. I just started working at 20.
You program wonderfully interesting recitals. So often, singers feel they have to stick with the mainstream and not branch out from there. From what I’ve seen of your work, you don’t seem to see the same repertoire boundaries other people may see.
I actually feel more guilty when I program something that is very famous. I feel like I must not be working hard enough.
How do you go about choosing repertoire, choosing themes, and finding the music? Do you have a process?
Usually, when I choose to do an evening, I know some of what I want to be on it already. Then it’s a question of reading about it some more, listening to it, [and] going up to visit Glendower Jones who runs the indispensable Classical Vocal Reprints. Going to his place is insanely pleasurable. I just love being there with him. You walk out $300 poorer, but with quite a lot of music. It’s great. He’s great!
Do you spend much time in libraries?
Sure. I like that kind of thing. You see something on the shelf, you open it up, and there’s something there. I have a memory like a steel trap when it comes to music. Everything that I’ve heard over the years kind of comes barreling back. Like when I was doing my operetta show, I remembered a long time ago hearing this fabulous piece. I didn’t know what it was. I just remembered that it was a cowboy piece in German. I was looking for [Franz] Lehar, and I passed [Emmerich] Kalman—and I saw Arizona Lady. I opened it up, and there it was. [Sings] “Song der prairie, Lied der prairie.” It was one of the funniest things we ever did.
Do you have any tips on finding repertoire and branching out for singers planning recitals?
It starts with a lot of listening so that you have a background. Then follow your own passions and keep enlarging on them—and keep pushing yourself a little bit. I’m often playing things and think, “I think this is beyond me.” But I push myself to learn as much as I can and to keep growing. That’s one thing: Never say never, never say die.
Also, think about your audience. When I get up to do a concert, I’m thinking about entertaining several kinds of people. One may be the scholar—OK, it was Michael Beckerman—who spent an hour on the phone with me explaining about Dvorak and his protégé Harry Burleigh in New York in 1895. Then I think about my friend Monte, to whom Dvorak is a slightly fuzzy concept, and who’s never heard of Burleigh. I’m trying to entertain everyone at the same time. I’m also trying to create an environment for the audience where they feel welcome and stimulated.
I don’t worry about the audience judging me. I think a lot of singers and pianists are stymied because they’ve done too many juries and auditions. The minute they start to sing, they’re killing themselves for having made that mistake or this mistake. Audiences don’t care about that—they rather like mistakes. Audiences want desperately to be stimulated, and fed, and given something they can respond to.
Finding a good way to start a concert is very important. I need to know the first song creates a feeling like: “Oh, this is going to be good,” as opposed to, “Oh, this is what I was dreading.” I like to have songs that welcome the audience and sort of open the subject up.
I think the end of the first half is very important and the last song is important. When I have the opener, end of first half, and end of second half in place, I know that I’m OK. From then on, I can see what the journey is to get there.
When singers come to work with you, how prepared do you expect them to be?
I expect them to be very prepared, especially at Juilliard. I’m not very good at teaching notes. Sometimes people will be working on something—and they’ll have learned it even, and know it—but they’ll have no idea what they’re really saying, or what the song means. We live in the Google age—it takes 30 seconds.
Know what you’re saying, and if you don’t know, ask.
You have said that concert-giving is really all a big trust game. What did you mean by that?
Performing is a huge trust game. I trust that [performers] are giving of their best. They trust that I’m not going to transpose the song up a half step and not say anything, [and] that I’m going to take the tempo that we’ve worked at. You’re also building trust with an audience. People will come to whatever I do, because they know I’ve really thought about their needs. They trust that they will be nurtured, entertained, and educated.
What can a singer can do to nurture the relationship between pianist and singer?
Having a vocabulary for a pianist, so that that you can ask for what you need in a way that the pianist will understand and not feel talked down to, or threatened. To make them understand that what they’re doing isn’t wrong, but it’s making it hard for you to do the song the way you can, or have to, or want to.
The other thing that’s really important between singer and pianist is to have a common expressive goal—to go under the song and say, “What is this song really about? What are we expressing together?” Some pianists can respond to that, and some pianists can’t. Some just say, “Fast, slow, loud, soft, pedal, no pedal—that’s all I can deal with.” Other pianists want to go on a journey with the singer, which is what I’m trying to do. I’m much more likely to get it right with a much larger artistic idea.
Is there anything about singers that drives you crazy? For instance, I’ve heard coaches say that stapled music drives them crazy.
Oh, yes. Terrible. Also, being handed a book of music that’s one page at a time, not double-sided. Horrible. Never do that.
I like singers who take responsibility for themselves. I don’t like it when a singer is coming down with something, and won’t go to a doctor. I see it with the younger singers—they think they’ll just tough it out. They have to learn that if you’re getting sick and you have a concert in three days, you must do something about it instantly.
When you’re getting exhausted and you don’t take time to rest, that makes me crazy, too.
What are some magical moments you’ve had accompanying?
One of them was actually when I wasn’t playing. We did a concert called “All Together Now” this year, which was all ensemble singing. I had eight singers in that concert. They were very strong musicians—people who could easily have carried a solo recital and done something quite striking on their own. A lot of it was a cappella, so I got a chance to just listen to them sing together, and become part of the NYFOS audience. Listening to them I thought, “I’m in heaven. This is so beautiful.”
In every concert there’ll be something that just rocks my world, something where you think, “We’re really levitating right now.” In general, doing Spanish music and Latin American music has provided me with some of my most delirious moments on stage—Granados with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Brazilian songs with Jennifer Aylmer and Jeff Picon, and Argentinean music with Hugh Russell—I almost didn’t make it back to earth.
Any final words for Classical Singer readers?
Music is a very deeply important factor in our culture right now. People who are involved in trying to make music and keep music in front of the public have a sacred mission in this culture. We stand for something and we give something that is of the essence.
Take this job as an artist very seriously and remember to love it. It’s so easy to forget what we’re really doing. I know we’re all trying to make a career and keep a career, but beyond that, beyond the every day grind of trying to feel accepted, remember that we’re doing something that is truly noble and sacred.
Music is the invisible art, the only art that you can’t actually see. It’s all vibration. One of the things I loved about the “All Together Now” concert was that I could actually look at the audience and watch them. There was something about the combination of voices and the trajectory of all the different kinds of music we did that people were vibrating to. That’s what you do with music. You have to remember that you’re putting a vibration into the world.
It may be a tiny thing, but it still gives people the courage to face life. Music creates community.
