Meet the Director

Ray Fahrner

Conductor, composer, and Director of the Office of Performing Arts, Ray Fahrner founded the COF Chorus in October of 2005, and the COF Jazz Band in 2008. As a conductor, he has worked with not only COF, but also the Old Stoughton Musical Society, the Boston Chamber Ensemble, the Jamaica Plain Symphony, the Greater Marlborough Symphony Orchestra, and the Cape Cod Community College Chorus. Musicians as disparate as Richard Stoltzman and Joey McIntyre have come under his baton. He is currently in his 29th year as music director of the Cambridge Chamber Singers, who performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC in 2007.  A graduate of the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, and of Trinity College, Dr. Fahrner has also served as Artistic Director of Young Audiences of Massachusetts, Acting Administrative Officer of MIT’s Department of Mathematics, and Associate Professor of Music at Ohio Northern University.  He is currently an adjunct professor at Emmanuel College.

A champion of contemporary music, Fahrner has programmed thirty world premieres and over a hundred American premieres, including those of Gyrgy Ligeti. An award-winning composer and fellow of the MacDowell Colony, Ray’s compositions include works for orchestra, chorus, jazz band, television and theater, including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, for which he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Composers Fellowship.  With the poet Bill Yarrow, Fahrner’s CD Pointed Music was released in November of 2015, and is available at www.cdbaby.com.