Music by "Great American Songwriting Teams" was the focus of the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) November program, which I heard on the 19th, at its third and final outing, with NYFOS' invaluable Artistic Director, Co-founder, pianist and arranger Steven Blier guiding Jason Graae, Sylvia McNair and Mary Testa, a winning trio of singers, at Merkin Concert Hall. Blier and Graae opened the proceedings with a most optimist number, Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson's "Lucky Day," from "George White's Scandals of 1926."

A spellbound Testa inaugurated the Richard Rodgers and witty, gay Lorenz Hart group, as she limned the love who has enthralled her, in the waltz "Wait Till You See Him," from "By Jupiter," with a midpoint instrumental interlude for Blier and, from Testa, a little ornamental figure near the end. Love fully took hold of a surprised, and not entirely happy about it, McNair, in "It Never Entered My Mind," from "Higher and Higher." Pattering away, McNair and Graae looked back at bickering past, and realized they missed it, in "I Wish I Were in Love Again," from "Babes in Arms," complete with comic dance break. In rarities by Rodgers, written with Oscar Hammerstein II, Testa aired a dry view of "Two Short Years," in a song cut from "Allegro," while McNair was totally convinced that "No Other Love (have I)," from "Me and Juliet," but originally composed to accompany an episode of "Victory at Sea," a television documentary, about U.S. Navy exploits in South American waters during World War Two. There were more than a few sour grapes in Testa's "The Gentleman is a Dope" ("he doesn't belong to me"), from "Allegro," "meant as a companion piece," Blier explained, to Rodgers and Hart's "The Lady is a Tramp."

In selections, familiar and rare, by Gershwin brothers George and Ira, McNair's rapturous, undeniably 'pops' performance of "Love Walked In," from "The Goldwyn Follies," contained not unwelcome hints of the operatic lyric soprano she was before she crossed over, and Graae dulcetly declared himself the "Luckiest Man in the World," in a song from 1933 flop "Pardon My English," comparing his new and notoriously popular, experienced love to Cleopatra and Mme de Pompadour. The latter show, which Ira Gershwin called "a headache from start to finish," was, Blier told us, an unfortunately timed comedy, set in Dresden and boasting a chorus of comic "Polizei."

A pair by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz found a rueful Testa singing the blues about having "(lost my lover in the) Blue Grass," in horsy Kentucky, from the musical "Inside U.S.A." and, in a song from "Revenge with Music," Graae showed us just what an intoxicating combination "You and the Night and the Music" can be and, playing the oboe, with McNair on violin, joined Blier for an instrumental verse. Blier wasn't planning to include this next Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer song, but McNair prevailed, because "(it's) A Woman's Prerogative," charming and lilting, from "St. Louis Woman." Testa and Graae explored blue notes and syncopation in Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green's "Wrong Note Rag," from "Wonderful Town," which ended as an instrumental, with Blier at the Steinway, McNair on violin, Graae on oboe, and Testa, improvising, on air kazoo.

In "Before I Gaze on You Again," from Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's "Camelot," McNair, as Guenevere, bade a wistful, nay wrenching, farewell to the compelling, but most inconvenient Sir Lancelot du Lac, whose love had no place in her life as King Arthur's Queen. Taking up two by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Graae cheerfully-wryly?-assessed the international variety of fast food available at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, in "Popsicles in Paris," from "To Broadway with Love," written for the Fair in Flushing Meadow, and the trio enacted the trial of corrupt cronies of "Gentleman" Jimmy Walker, the incumbent New York City Mayor that Fiorello LaGuardia would defeat in 1933, in "Little Tin Box," from "Fiorello," with the politicos telling tall tales about how they accumulated their unbelievable wealth, and McNair's hoarse thug particularly priceless.

Drawing on Richard Maltby and David Shire's "Starting Here, Starting Now," Graae and Testa found they were perfect for each other because "We Can Talk to Each Other," or they could if he would curb his enthusiasm and let her get in a word edgewise-it was her spoken punch line, "I am a lesbian," that finally left him speechless-and a relentless Testa embarked on the ultimate makeover, at Bloomingdale's, of an unseen victim, in "I'm Going to Make You Beautiful"-or else. Celebrating the partnership of William Bolcom and Arthur Weinstein, Testa tackled Muffin's aria from "A Wedding," "Blue green beautiful chlorine," a reverie about a man she saw in a swimming pool, in a rather lower key than high soprano Anna Christy did in the Chicago Lyric Opera premiere, and again, two weeks ago, in the New York City Opera opening Gala, and a lusty "Night, Make My Day" from "Casino Paradise," song of a mobster's daughter, on the verge of marriage and eager to be a virgin no more. In "Toothbrush Time," from "Cabaret Songs," Graae impatiently waited for last night's man to leave, only to make a commitment to agree to see him again that night.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote songs for Elvis Presley ("Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock") and Peggy Lee ("Is That All There Is?") and, here, Graae sang the praises of a gypsy woman's potent "Love Potion Number Nine"-he even kissed a cop; McNair, in hot and hep mode, shared that "Some Cats Know"-Graae's wrong note tooting on his oboe didn't cut it-and the trio revved up their motors to tell the tragic tale of "the terror of Highway Number One" in his "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots."

A couple of love songs as encores-McNair's sweet "A Little Bit in Love," from "Wonderful Town," with an interpolated high note near the end and no breath necessary before the segue into the next line, and Testa and Graae's high calorie ode to "Sara Lee," by John Kander and Fred Ebb-rounded out this survey.

Next on tap for NYFOS are, at the Juilliard School, on January 13, 2010, "Killer B's," not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but "American Song from Amy Beach to the Beach Boys," with Bernstein, Barber, Bolcom, Bowles, Blake, Beaser, and Burleigh in between, and at Merkin on February 16 and 18, "The Voluptuous Muse," music of late-Romantics Nikolai Medtner, Karol Szymanowski, Erich Korngold and Richard Strauss, with Dina Kuznetsova, Kate Lindsey, Joseph Kaiser, Blier and Michael Barrett. Free tickets for the Juilliard performance will be available at the Juilliard box office at Lincoln Center after January 4. Tickets for the Merkin Hall performances are priced from $40 to 55, and can be purchased at the box office at 129 West 67th Street. Student tickets, at $15, can be obtained by calling NYFOS at 646/230-8380. Visit www.nyfos.org for further information.