Ben Bliss at the Park Avenue Armory
Mix and Match Songs Accompanied by Christopher Allen
By: Susan HHall - Oct 15, 2026
In the opera house, he is known as Benjamin Bliss and is highly regarded. At the Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room, he goes simply by Ben, singing a wide range of songs in his beautiful voice and speaking to us through the sound of music.
For the intimate warmth of the Park Avenue Armory setting, Mr. Bliss explores what he describes as "stylistic diversity." Like Dr. Albert C.Barnes, who arranged his art collection to give viewers a fresh experience, Mr. Bliss offers a diverse range of music so that we can experience even the familiar anew. He has noted that "what juxtapositions do—in museums as in recitals—is to make the visitor or listener discover something new... and find something unexpected... connecting them." Mr. Bliss leads us on a pleasurable, revelatory journey.
Strange bedfellows turn out to be more closely related than you might have previously imagined. “Lonely House” from Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes’s Street Scene—operatic in character, though premiered on Broadway—mixes seamlessly alongside works by Richard Rodgers, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim.
Classical composers like Charles Ives and Samuel Barber chose poets such as e.e.e. Cummings and Frederic Prokosch (a writer’s writer). Who knew that Allen Ginsberg had collaborated with Philip Glass on a midwest journey (Wichita Vortex Sutra), a work that Mr. Bliss uttered with a full panoply of feeling?
Weaving together themes of love, personal ambition, and storytelling in America, Mr. Bliss closed the main program with a touch of theatrical flair—and an encore that brought a bit of Franz Liszt.
Accompanied by the superb pianist Christopher Allen, the concert both satisfied and elevated the audience. Mr. Allen noted that the Armory’s concert series was brought to life thanks to impresario Matthew Epstein.