By BENJAMIN SOSLAND

When Steven Blier and Michael Barrett founded the New York Festival of Song nearly 20 years ago, they did so with a not immodest goal in mind: to reinvent the song recital. "NYFOS was created to get away from staid vocal recitals," Michael Barrett explained in a recent interview. "We set out to open the Pandora's Box of the vocal literature—past, present, and future—and at the same time create specific programs that would allow an audience a deeper experience of the musical and literary material being performed." Each NYFOS concert is built around a central theme—it could be songs from a particular era or country, or perhaps songs written for specific occasions. After 20 years of performances, NYFOS has become renowned for both the quality of its music-making and the eclecticism of its programming. A recital last month that featured works by English composers, for example, included songs by (among others) Dowland, Vaughan Williams, Britten—and the Beatles. For Blier and Barrett, very little is off limits.

Steven Blier directs a New York Festival of Song program on January 17 at Juilliard titled "Songs of Peace and War."(Photos by Rosalie O'Connor )

Juilliard's collaboration with NYFOS began last year, as part of the School's centennial celebration, in a program called "100 Years of Juilliard Composers in Song." NYFOS will return to Juilliard to share its passion for unusual programming on January 17 in a free concert called "Songs of Peace and War," which will feature singers from the Department of Vocal Arts. The idea to explore the subject of war, and the hope for peace, first came to Blier and Barrett in 2002, when the U.S. was poised to invade Iraq. As Barrett remembers, "The post-9/11 morale was near its nadir, and we were losing heart. We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and did what artists are supposed to do—put on a show that would engage the public." The passage of time has not lessened the sensitivity to war and its implications. "It has been a sobering return to the subject of war," explains Blier. "Our sense of loss and frustration is, if anything, greater now than it was in 2002." Adds Barrett: "Peace [now] seems more a state of personal well-being than a nationalistic ideal."

The main thrust of the program, however, will not be political; it will be musical. In building the program, Blier, a member of Juilliard's Vocal Arts faculty, wanted students to take an active role by researching and suggesting songs themselves. "We've encouraged the singers to look at songs from many eras—the two World Wars, the Civil War, the Vietnam era, medieval times, 19th-century Russia," he explains. "I encourage them constantly not just to bring me a single song, but to think in groups of songs: What story does a particular song tell, and what other songs would set up that story, or bring it to a conclusion?"

Above: Songs by Randy Newman will be featured at the January 17 concert. (Photo by Scott Suchman )Below: American folklorist, Jean Ritchie, seen in 1947 with Oscar Brand in the studio of WNYC radio. (Photo by George Pickow )

Elizabeth Hurwitt, NYFOS's executive director, adds, "Songs have a tendency to spontaneously form chains that are even more powerful than any individual song. For anyone who wants to create an evening of song in the concert hall that will move and excite audiences, studying and obtaining practical experience with the way these chains work, while learning to facilitate the seemingly organic growth of a program of songs, is paramount."

Blier says he has been continually impressed with the level of commitment with which the students have approached the process. He describes the students as "very bright people with exciting voices and a tremendous dedication to the project. It's exciting to help them find songs that speak to them." Hurwitt is especially keen on sharing NYFOS's philosophy with the next generation of recitalists. "Some of the most respected performers to appear [with NYFOS] have repeatedly told us that they have never found any programs so challenging, nor ultimately, as satisfying artistically," she says. "This experience is what we would like to extend to students of Juilliard's Vocal Arts Department."

The resulting list of songs is impressively diverse, as Blier explains. "The repertoire for the concert will come from England, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and of course America—with composers ranging from Mussorgsky and Duparc to Randy Newman and the great American folklorist Jean Ritchie. We sing about the grief of loss but also the heady, reckless enthusiasm of young soldiers, the devastation of the earth and also the hope for regeneration. We hear from the women who have been left behind to wait for their soldier husbands to come home. Many of the pieces have an eerie timelessness: 'The Petroleum Song,' also known as 'Muschel von Margate' [by Kurt Weill], talks about how oil sets the entire world aflame, how oil is manufactured from men's blood. It could have been written yesterday."

New York Festival of Song: "Songs of Peace and War" Peter Jay Sharp Theater Wednesday, Jan. 17, 8 p.m. Free tickets available Jan. 3 in the Juilliard Box Office. Please see the Calendar of Events for more information.

Blier finds the concert's final song, "Now is the Cool of the Day," by Jean Ritchie, especially poignant. "It tells how the Lord gave us the earth and the water and the air, and bade us take care of it. God promises that He will return at the cool of the day, and as the group quietly sings the refrain, 'Now is the cool of the day,' the implied question is: what have we done with the beauty and the promise of our planet? What devastation have we wreaked on the natural world in the name of holiness and freedom? What can we do to heal the earth?" The answers to such potent questions may not reveal themselves soon. But, as Barrett says, "The real hope for the future remains constant, and it is embodied by the next generation. The young artists singing [in "Songs of Peace and War"] may not come up with the solution to world peace, but they are doing their part in the best way they know how—by sharing their talents, and presenting music and poetry, two of the strongest vehicles for intellectual and emotional communication."

Benjamin Sosland, a D.M.A. candidate in voice, also serves as publications coordinator and assistant to the artistic director in the Vocal Arts Department.