The concert is the brainchild of Steven Blier, pianist, vocal coach, and NYFOS artistic director, who will accompany a crew of six singers. Blier, 60, knows as much about songs and singing as anyone and more than most. He has devoted his life to what he calls “the confluence of words and music’’ ever since he began playing the piano at age 3. Among the many singers he has accompanied in concert are the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Cecilia Bartoli, and Renée Fleming.
Blier’s expertise ranges across centuries and genres, but what underlies it all is the direct, unmediated communication between singer and audience that a vocal recital can achieve. That desire for connection is one reason that Blier, in assembling this program, decided to eschew classical art songs, most of which require an American audience to voyage outside its native language. “You literally have to translate them,’’ he says during a recent phone conversation. “You have to be reading if you don’t speak those languages or you don’t know that song. I love communicating with people directly, one-to-one. Put down your programs and just let us talk straight to you.’’
Also, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Fauré are, to some extent, prisoners of their eras, no matter how universal the sentiments underlying their songs. Or, as Blier wittily puts it in his program note, they are “understandably mute on the dilemmas of 21st-century lovers: bad dates, unexpectedly exotic sexual predilections, fringy obsessions, partners who leave hairballs in the sink.’’
“A Modern Person’s Guide’’ touches on all of these, with songs that range from the Great American Songbook to Tom Lehrer to the innovative vocal quartet the Bobs. The concert divides into neat thematic sections, beginning with “Young Love.’’ The innocence of Frank Loesser’s “Standing on the Corner’’ plays off against the sly sexual innuendo of Irving Berlin’s “You’d Be Surprised.’’
