Concert Chats

Join Peter J. Fay for his informative discussions about the concert music in the upstairs seminar room at Schlesinger Center starting one hour prior to each performance.

Peter J. Fay has served since 1986 as the music critic on Public Television’s arts panel program, “Around Town,” WETA-TV’s Emmy award-winning weekly television show devoted to the performing arts, visual arts, and motion pictures. Mr. Fay is also the Arts Editor and Contributing Editor to WAMU FM’s “Metro Connection,” a weekly radio program covering events in the Washington, D.C. area.

Mr. Fay writes regularly for the Washington Opera Magazine, Washington Review, and WETA Magazine. His program notes are featured in Stagebill magazine. Mr. Fay has written on subjects as diverse as Mozart operas, Gregorian chant, and jazz.

As Director of the former Performing Arts Library at the Kennedy Center, a joint project with the Library of Congress, during its entire existence from 1978 through 1992, Mr. Fay fashioned the library into an incomparable resource for information on the performing arts, film and broadcasting. Prior to his tenure at the Kennedy Center, he was a music librarian at the Library of Congress.

He has lectured regularly for the Washington Bach Consort since 1993, including a series of lectures in Germany in July, 2000. He has lectured on the music of Bach, Monteverdi and Mendelssohn, and on the subject of criticism itself. His speaking venues include: Mount Vernon College, the Folger Library, George Mason University, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Cathedral and the Kennedy Center.

Mr. Fay is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Composers Forum. He is also the Past-President of the Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive. He is a current or former member of the Boards of several arts organizations in the Washington area.

As a singer, Mr. Fay has appeared with the Washington Opera, the Wolf Trap Opera, and Summer Opera Theatre. The Washington Post music critic called his singing, “stylistically impressive and particularly distinguished.” Mr. Fay is also a composer whose works have been performed in churches and synagogues and on national television; his most recent work has been published by Augsburg-Fortress Press of Minneapolis. A recording of Mr. Fay’s compositions is supported by a grant from the D. C. Commission on Arts and Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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