Executive Director
Kathleen Fay
Kathleen Fay, BEMF Executive Director has served as Executive Director of the Boston Early Music Festival & Exhibition since 1989, and was General Manager starting in 1987. She is responsible for all administrative, developmental, financial, and artistic functions of the organization. These include the management of the biennial Festivals, the annual Concert Series in Boston and in New York City at The Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum, the annual Chamber Operas, the Youth Education Program, and the Festival’s Baroque Opera Recording Project—an initiative to record BEMF’s ground-breaking work in the field of Baroque opera. She has been the Executive Producer for the project’s three CDs to date, all released on the CPO label, and each of which has received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Opera Recording.
Ms. Fay is a founding trustee of the Catalogue for Philanthropy and serves on the boards of the Cambridge Society for Early Music and Exsultemus; she 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.”
Ms. Fay is a widely respected impresario and promoter of early music in the Boston area and throughout the United States. She holds degrees in Piano Performance and Music Teaching from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.
