Gillian Fox is a classical trained singer, one who studied music and minored in business for her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Rochester, well-known for its programs in both disciplines. Soon, however, she realized performing as a career “wasn’t the track for me.”
Though she has enjoyed singing in choirs and a cappella groups, she wasn’t interested in using her own voice as a soloist but rather amplifying and connecting those of others.
She has the chance to do just that in our area as the new president and CEO of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, a position she assumes today, Monday, June 9. Fox, who had served as the executive director of Newport Classical in Newport, Rhode Island, since 2021, succeeds Edward J. Lewis III, who left Caramoor at the end of March to become senior vice president of institutional advancement at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Gillian Fox as the next leader of Caramoor,” Board Chairman James A. Attwood Jr. said in a statement. “She brings a rare combination of strategic insight, artistic sensibility and a proven track record in arts leadership. Her deep experience in development, organizational management and community engagement makes her ideally equipped to guide us forward. Gillian’s values as a champion of creativity and her commitment to cultivating new audiences resonate deeply with us. As Caramoor celebrates its 80th anniversary, we look forward to this next chapter with great confidence and excitement.”
For her part, Fox is just as enthusiastic – about living in neighboring Bedford Hills with its proximity to New York City, ample green spaces and excellent schools (she and her husband, an artists’ agent, have a 2 and 1/2-year-old daughter); and about leading Caramoor, acclaimed for its summer music festival, Mediterranean-style house museum and year-round arts programming, as it celebrates a milestone anniversary.
“The 80th anniversary season will truly be an experience for everyone,” she said. “My hope for those who never came to Caramoor before is that they will find it a truly welcoming environment.”
Indeed, Fox is looking forward to introducing her daughter to the site’s 81 acres of woodlands and gardens and to the annual Jazz Festival within the festival, which is presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center and headlined by Arturo O’Farrill, whom Fox coincidentally once represented as an artists’ agent. (Fox’s daughter is already a jazz fan, with a Terence Blanchard T-shirt in tribute to the trumpeter and composer, her mother said.)
Before music lovers get to the Jazz Festival on July 26, there will be more than a few riffs from Ludwig van B. The festival opens June 21 with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as Rafael Payare, music director of the San Diego Symphony and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, leads the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL), Caramoor’s in-house orchestra, and the Caramoor Festival Chorus, along with soprano Gabriella Reyes, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Viktor Antipenko, bass-baritone Joseph Parrish – an alumnus of Caramoor’s Schwab Vocal Rising Stars program – as soloists. It will be a night to celebrate Caramoor’s “vibrant” collaboration with St. Luke’s as well as the success of the Rising Stars program, Fox said.
More conducting debuts and more Beethoven are on the bill as Anna Rakitina leads OSL and violinist Stella Chen in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, on a program with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 (July 13).
But perhaps the biggest Beethoven evening – and on its way to a sellout – will be pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s “Beethoven for Three” with the musicians performing the “Lenore Overture” as a trio and the Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) as a quartet with violist Nicholas Cords (July 30).
Other festival highlights include:
An evening of Broadway songs by some of the greatest gay artists in collaboration with The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center and SiriusXM host Seth Rudetsky at the keyboard (June 26);
The annual American Roots Festival, exploring folk, blues and bluegrass (June 28);
Going for Baroque with Telemann’s opera “Pimpinone” and cantata “Ino” (June 29), performed by the Boston Early Music Festival; and Monteverdi’s “L’incoronazione di Poppea” (July 12), performed by Cappella Mediterannea (July 12);
“Pops, Patriots and Fireworks” on the Fourth of July;
Music From The Sole, celebrating tap dance’s roots in the African diaspora (July 17);
The pure a cappella singing of Chanticleer, which performs its ecology-themed program “Music of a Silent World” (July 18);
And the Caramoor debut of four-time Grammy Award winner Lyle Lovett and His Large Band (Aug. 2).
For Fox, Caramoor’s summer music festival is an echo of her career thus far. Besides having worked with Arturo O’Farrill as an artists’ agent, she presented The Knights, a New York-based group created to expand the boundaries of classical music, when she was executive director of Newport Classical. (The Knights will perform at Caramoor July 20). For four years at Newport Classical – formerly the Newport Music Festival and separate from the Newport Folk Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival – Fox oversaw its expansion from a three-week festival into a yearly program. Prior to being recruited for Newport Classical, she served as director of the Soluna Festival and Contemporary Programs at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, standing at the nexus of classical music, the visual arts and the sciences for such ventures as “Music and the Brain.”
It’s an indication of how Fox will lead Caramoor into its next 80 years, looking for connections among the arts and artists and with the community.
One of the things she wants to promote is The Rosen House, the eclectic house museum that was the home of financier/art collector Walter T. Rosen and his wife, the former Lucie Bigelow, who played the theremin, an electronic instrument. (They began to ensure Caramoor’s musical legacy when their only son, Walter, died in World War II. The Rosens surviving child, Anne Stern, was instrumental in opening the house to the public.)
Year-round the house is home to concerts as well as tours. The festival’s “Recitals in the Music Room” comprises hour-long programs on late Saturday afternoons that feature young classical instrumentalists on the rise, with an opportunity to meet the artists after each performance.
“I want to continue to leverage Rosen House and the history of the Rosens,” Fox said.
These are difficult times for the arts as deep cuts in already appropriated and future federal funding have left cultural organizations scrambling to make up for lost grants. Caramoor has an operating budget of $7.8 million, 64 staffers (28 annual, 36 seasonal) and 75 volunteers and docents — numbers that tell only part of the story of the challenge of a life of excellence in the arts, a spokesman said: “As is common among nonprofit arts institutions,its artistic programs operate at a deficit, and the organization relies on its donors to sustain the quality of performances and beauty of the gardens and grounds.”
Added Fox: “Caramoor is a nonprofit that is heavily supported by the community. Now more than ever that support is vital.”
Caramoor’s summer season runs through Aug. 3. For a complete list of offerings, click here.
