Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago’s 11th annual Collaborative Works Festival explores Chicago’s rich musical history through song.

The Festival’s opening program, Chicago's Own, features songs of composers who were born in Chicago as well as those who studied and taught at many of Chicago's universities and institutions. The second program, Music and Poetry, features the music of some of Chicago’s Black American composers who blazed new trails for Black American composers and musicians both in Chicago and nationwide. The closing program examines Chicago poet, journalist, and urban folk singer Carl Sandburg’s seminal anthology of American Folk songs, The American Songbag.

Curated in collaboration with soprano Susanna Phillips, the 2022 Series entitled A Love Story in Song examined the intense, intimate relationships between composers Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, and the impact these connections had on their lives and work, with a special emphasis on their art songs (Lieder).

San Francisco Performances’ 2022 Salon Series: The Women, featured exclusively the works of women composers, the series was comprised of 4 concerts, featuring music spanning over four and a half centuries, shedding light on the long history of musical pioneers who have been overlooked due to centuries of sexism.

A wide range of composers were explored, from the first woman to have a book of her music published, Maddalena Casulana, to women composers of the Parisian Belle époque like Pauline Viardot, to 20th century composers such as Margaret Bonds, Viteszlava Kaprálová, Alma Mahler, and Florence Price, as well as some of the women composers of today, such as Gabriela Lena Frank and Errollyn Wallen.

The 2021 Collaborative Works Festival: Strangers in a Strange Land explored themes of immigration and migration in song, featuring the works of a wide-range of composers, many of whom immigrated or migrated during the course of their own lifetimes.

“The Collaborative Works Festival…is a gem of the city’s fall concert calendar…each autumn CAIC reliably presents compelling art song programing in intelligently curated programs performed by world-class singers and pianists. In its 10th iteration, this year’s festival proved no exception.” – Chicago Classical Review

Celebrating diversity in song, this recital was co-curated with mezzo-soprano Ronnita Miller and explored the many things our hearts desire. Featuring compositions by women and people of color, the program included selections about romantic desire, physical desire, and the longing for home, for rest, for peace, and for a better world performed by select 2021 Merola young artists.

A festival featuring exclusively the works of women composers, spanning over four and a half centuries, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted women the right to vote.

“easily demonstrated why CAIC has emerged as one of the classiest vocal performance options in the city.” – Opera News

A themed recital spanning four and half centuries of music, meditating on humanity's relationship with time: how it sometimes feels as though it is flying by, how sometimes it feels as though it is endless, and how finite it is. No matter how much time we feel we have, we only have so much.

“This tour de force by Phan and the PCMS provides a shot of adrenaline to the Philadelphia chamber music scene, attracting a more diverse audience to discover art songs and the picture they paint of history and social change.” – Broad Street Review

A three day festival exploring the work of living composers in the genre of song.

“Best of 2019 - Best Programming” – Chicago Classical Review

A special program commemorating the centenary of the World War I Armistice curated and performed by Phan for WFMT.

A three day festival exploring the narrative and dramatic power of the song cycle.

This program (which can be viewed in its entirety here) for WQXR explored some of the most colorful characters of Paris’ La Belle Epoque in a special night of poetry and music in The Greene Space.

“American tenor Nicholas Phan led members of Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire in a stunning live performance of Phan’s English Baroque lute song album, A Painted Tale…The original accompaniments were expanded to include an ensemble of two violins, two lute players (on various instruments), and two violists da gamba, all of whom are Apollo’s Fire regulars…There was not a weak moment in the 90-minute concert.”

– Cleveland Classical

In 2018, Nicholas Phan was the first singer to be invited to serve as guest artistic director of the Laguna Beach Music Festival, co-presented annually by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and Laguna Beach Live. The week-long festival served a survey of the wide breadth of the power of song, spanning multiple genres from German Lieder to pop standards of today.

What are songs but stories set to music? Whether they are confessional stories of the self or the telling of any variety of narrative, songs are but musical tales.

A festival of concerts which explored the influence of French poet, Paul Verlaine, who’s poetry has been set to music more than any other French poet.

A festival of concerts which explored the complicated relationship between America and religion.

A three-day festival of concerts which explored the complicated and deep relationships between Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

A three-day festival of concerts which celebrated the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth in 2013.