Acclaimed American soprano Renée Fleming will serve as festival director for the 2025 May Festival.
“It is our honor and privilege to welcome five-time Grammy Award winner and renowned soprano Renée Fleming as our 2025 Festival Director,” said Matthew Swanson, recently appointed director of choruses for the May Festival. “Embracing our most cherished traditions while celebrating the vibrancy of contemporary music, Renée has curated an extraordinary series of programs that explore the depths of the human experience — from love and the beauty of dawn to the fragility of life on Earth.”
The 2025 season continues to forge a new direction for the oldest continuously running choral festival in the western hemisphere. New works and multi-media experiences are prominently featured.
Fleming has also become a leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health and neuroscience. As artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, she launched the first ongoing collaboration between America’s national cultural center and the National Institutes of Health. She has presented her program Music and the Mind in more than 50 cities around the world, and launched Music and Mind LIVE, a weekly web show that amassed nearly 700,000 views from 70 countries.
Fleming will do more than perform: She will lead a panel discussion on the intersection of music, science and healing, open to the public.
On May 18, 2025, the May Festival Chorus, May Festival Chamber Choir, May Festival Youth Chorus and Ambassadors Ensemble from the Cincinnati Boychoir join forces for a monumental choral music event at Music Hall. Inspired by Fleming’s work in promoting the healing power of music, this unique performance will highlight the transformative effects of community and singing together.
Composer Kevin Puts’ new work, The Brightness of Light, explores the relationship between renowned artist Georgia O’Keefe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Fleming will sing O’Keefe with baritone Rod Gilfry as Stieglitz during the performance of The Brightness of Light on May 22. Puts is best known for his operas Silent Night and The Hours and this latest work combines his vocal artistry with projections of O’Keefe’s works.
The season concludes with Fleming performing solo pieces, joined by the May Festival Choir.
This May Festival season is one of the most exciting in years and under Swanson’s leadership, it will sound even more so.
For more information about the 2025 May Festival, visit mayfestival.com.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 12, 2024.