In partnership with the Sorel Organization, SongFest has made a substantial contribution to the art song repertoire through its commissioning program that has produced new works for voice and piano by such distinguished composers as William Bolcom, Tom Cipullo, Anne LeBaron, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Harbison, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, and Shulamit Ran.

SongFest is thrilled to announce that the 2017 Sorel commission has been awarded to art-song champion Juliana Hall. Her work,  "WHEN THE SOUTH WIND SINGS" (7 songs for soprano and piano on poems by Carl Sandburg), will be performed at SongFest 2017 by a professional fellow soprano and pianist at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles, date and time TBA. Click here to learn more about Juliana Hall and her work.

By Louis Lebherz

THE FIRST WEEK of the new year brought to Carmel Valley a new program produced through Hidden Valley Music Seminars entitled SongFest Winter Intensive, and subtitled “Vienna in the Valley.” A vision of founder/director Rosemary Ritter, SongFest is a program for serious young singers housed at the glamorous Colburn School of Music in downtown Los Angeles. The road to a successful classical singing career is so much more than a voice and a personality. It requires years of study and refinement in music theory and history, languages, vocal technique, acting skills and more. READ MORE...

Celebrating our 20th anniversary, SongFest releases our first CD, featuring SongFest's unique contribution to American art song with fifteen commissions, world premieres, and featured compositions by the best of contemporary American song composers, all performed by SongFest alumni and special guest Edward Arron, cello.

The CD is available for purchase at CDbaby http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/newamericansongsongfest

"During a recent SongFest public master class, the director Peter Sellars was coaching Mishael Eusebio, a poised tenor who told Sellars to call him Mish and brought confident emotion to Aaron Copland’s arrangement of the old American song “The Boatman’s Dance.

Sellars asked that the boatman call be a more droning refrain evoking the placid expanse of the Ohio River, and that Mish “get down” for the song’s high-spirited quickstep chorus. “Do you dance?” Sellars asked. The tenor smiled without otherwise answering.

Repeating the number, Eusebio nonchalantly threw in three or four remarkably polished tap dance steps for the chorus, causing song and singer to come spectacularly to life. Sellars yelled, “Yeeeeesss!” into his mike. Eusebio flashed that same sly smile." Read the full story here:

Congratulations to SongFest 2015 Stern Fellow soprano Marie Marquis who won the Debut Artist Recital Award in Joy of Singing's 2016 competition. SongFest would also like to congratulate finalists and SongFest alumni soprano Danya Katok, tenor Jason Weisinger, and 2016 Professional Fellow tenor Christopher Reames!

Libby Larsen (b. 24 December 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America’s most performed living composers.  She has created a catalog of over 500 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and over 15 operas. Grammy award-winning and widely recorded, including over 50 CD’s of her work, she is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles, and orchestras around the world, and has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory.

Toi toi to SongFest alumni Emily D'Angelo (2015 Young Artist) and Theo Hoffman (2013 Stern Fellow) in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals this coming Sunday, March 13th at 3pm at the Metropolitan Opera in New York!

SongFest, in collaboration with Hampsong Foundation, the Colburn School, and LA Opera, presents a special Song of America event in Los Angeles, California featuring song settings of poetry by the great American writers Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes. Join SongFest on June 25th for a morning educator workshop, with activities for K-12 teachers on integrating song into their classrooms, followed by an “Honest American” concert at noon featuring Young Artists from SongFest singing songs with texts by Whitman and Hughes. In the afternoon, internationally-renowned baritone, educator, and Hampsong Foundation founder Thomas Hampson will work with young artists at SongFest in a special Song in Dialogue segment, exploring the power of classic American songs as the gateway to a richer knowledge of the cultures, languages, peoples, and events that have shaped American life.

2010 Stern Fellow and current Lindemann Young Artist at the Metropolitan Opera received a rave review in the New York Times for her performance of Lisa in Bellini's "La Sonnambula." Read it here!

SongFest is thrilled to welcome director Peter Sellars for a special masterclass featuring his ground-breaking outlook on music, poetry, and theater. (Date to be announced soon!) Read more about his illustrious career here.

Don't miss SongFest faculty and internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer's riveting insights into the world of song in her recent article at the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susanne-mentzer/for-a-song_1_b_8942576.html

SongFest is thrilled to announce that acclaimed pianist and master teacher Roger Vignoles will be joining the SongFest faculty this summer 2016. Roger Vignoles is internationally recognised as one of the world’s most distinguished piano accompanists and musicians of today. He regularly partners the finest singers in major venues around the world and is regarded as a leading authority on the song repertoire. Originally inspired to pursue a career as a piano accompanist by the playing of Gerald Moore, he read Music at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and later joined the Royal Opera House as a repetiteur. He then completed his training with the renowned Viennese-born teacher Paul Hamburger. (read more)