Brooklyn Art Song Society’s innovative series continues to push the boundaries of what an art song recital can be.  This season’s featured composer is Jake Heggie, world renowned for smash-hit operas like Dead Man Walking and Moby Dick.  His works are paired with the French masters who inspired him: Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, and Francis Poulenc.

Jake Heggie is the composer of the operas Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, Great Scott, Three Decembers, Out of Darkness, and the choral opera, The Radio Hour, among others. He has also composed more than 250 songs, as well as chamber, choral and orchestral works. The operas – most created with writers Terrence McNally and Gene Scheer – have been produced on five continents. Moby-Dick (Scheer) was telecast throughout the United States as part of Great Performances’ 40th Season and released on DVD (EuroArts). Dead Man Walking (McNally) has received nearly 50 international productions and has been recorded twice. A Guggenheim Fellow, Heggie has served as a mentor for the Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative and is a frequent guest artist at universities, conservatories and festivals throughout the USA and Canada. The composer was recently awarded the Eddie Medora King prize from the UT Austin Butler School of Music. Upcoming is the world premiere of Heggie’s sixth full-length opera, It’s A Wonderful Life (Scheer), for the Houston Grand Opera, conducted by Patrick Summers and directed by Leonard Foglia. jakeheggie.com

The Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) will enter its seventh season of first-rate music making in the Fall of 2016, having earned a reputation as one of the preeminent organizations dedicated to the vast repertoire of poetry set to music. The New York Times called BASS “a company well worth watching” and Opera News writes, “Brooklyn Art Song Society keeps the intimate recital alive with innovative programming.” In May 2015 BASS released its first album, New Voices on Roven Records, which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard Traditional Classical charts.