Every summer, Steven Blier, artistic director of the New York Festival of Song, decamps to Orient to relax and restore. This past year has been a banger for Blier, with the publication of a lively and entertaining memoir, From Ear to Ear: A Pianist’s Love Affair with Song and a Grammy nomination for the CD Shubert/Beatles, recorded with baritone Theo Hoffman.
Lucky for us, along with his sunscreen and hat, Blier always brings a special concert. This year it’s called “Reunion” and will ring out Sunday afternoon at 3pm in Poquatuck Hall, with Hoffman, accompanied on the piano by Blier, and bringing a taste of that Grammy-worthy material to the East End.
In 1990 Blier won a Grammy for the premiere recording of Bernstein’s “Arias and Barcarolles” and he was a Grammy nominee in 1989, 1999 as well as this year.
He was three years old in the 1950s when his family began renting a cottage in Shelter Island’s Silver Beach, which at the time consisted of so few houses it hardly qualified as a neighborhood. Blier’s annual summer concerts for Orient began in a barn 17 years ago, later moving to the more refined quarters of Poquatuck Hall on Village Lane.
The concert is a “Reunion” on many levels, bringing Blier and Hoffman, Schubert and Beatles, together again, as well as Hoffman and Orient, where he last performed in 2014. Hoffman, who was a student of Blier’s, has emerged as a rising young singer with an international reputation.
“He is a powerhouse, a very versatile and imaginative singer.” Blier says. “He is able to be very still and interior, and capable of being extratroverted and dramatic.”
This year the program draws on songs from their Grammy-nominated CD Schubert/Beatles and includes both of those composers, plus an array of others from an Argentinean art song to a song by Bruce Springsteen. Favorites of the American Songbook from Sondheim, Gershwin, Rogers/Hart and Bernstein will complete the afternoon of song.
“Reunion.” Pianist Steven Blier accompanies baritone Theo Hoffman on Sunday August 2, 3pm at Poquatuck Hall on Village Lane in Orient. Tickets are $25 at Eventbrite or cash at the door.
