Since its first season, the NYFOS motto has been “No song is safe from us!” Manhattan-based pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier presented the very first concert season of New York Festival of Song in 1988. It was a series of intimate, original ensemble song programs consisting almost exclusively of rarely-heard songs of all kinds, “from Claude Debussy to doo-wop, lieder to latin jazz, Josquin to just-written.” 
 Each show was unified by a theme, constructed with a dramatic arc, and cast with superb vocal artists whose committed performances brought the songs to vivid life, with the directors as accompanists and animated narrators. This same dynamic model for seeking out unusual songs and sharing them audiences continues to shape NYFOS’s concerts today, in ways that continue to delight and surprise listeners. Newsday has called NYFOS “the most reliably excellent musical organization in New York.” 
 "insightful and imaginative, touching and funny" 
 — THE NEW YORK TIMES