Executive Director
Kathleen Fay
Kathleen Fay, BEMF Executive Director and Producer of the June 2011 operatic centerpiece, Agostino Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Tebe, has served as Executive Director of the Boston Early Music Festival & Exhibition since 1989, and as General Manager since 1987. Kathy is responsible for all administrative, development, financial, and artistic departments of the organization, as well as the management of biennial Festivals, the annual Concert Series in Boston and in New York City at The Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum, the annual Chamber Opera Series, the Youth Education and Family Day Programs, and the Festival’s Baroque Opera Recording Project—an initiative to record BEMF’s ground-breaking work in the field of Baroque opera, featuring a total of four CDs to date on the CPO label, three of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording.
Kathy is a founding Trustee of the Catalogue for Philanthropy and serves on the boards of the Cambridge Society for Early Music and Exsultemus; Kathy also serves on the advisory boards of the Constellation Center, a Cambridge-based performing arts center, and Harvard University’s Early Music Society.
In November 2001, Ms. Fay was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture as a result of her significant contribution to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. In June 2003 she received the distinguished Arion Award from the Cambridge Society of Early Music for her “outstanding contributions to musical culture.” And, in June of 2011, the Board of Directors of Early Music America named the Boston Early Music Festival, Kathleen Fay, Executive Director, as the 2011 recipient of the distinguished Howard Mayer Brown Award, for lifetime achievement in the field of early music.
Kathy is a widely respected impresario and promoter of early music in the Boston area and throughout the United States. Ms. Fay holds graduate degrees in Piano Performance and Music Teaching from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.