Artistic Director, Murray Kidd has been director of Polymnia Choral Society for the last fifteen years. Under his direction, Polymnia has performed major works including requiems by Brahms, Mozart, Rutter, Fauré, Michael Haydn and other works for orchestra and chorus. Another significant highlight was performing Jesus Christ, Superstar with full orchestra and Danny Zolli as Jesus Christ. He created the Polymnia Spotlight on High School Talent which identifies highly talented young musicians and features them in Polymnia’s season concerts. In 2015, Polymnia created an outreach program with the Salemwood Middle School in Malden and performed Dido and Aeneas with the 8th grade music students and also premiered a choral work by Jim Papoulis. As a choral educator, Mr. Kidd has been very active in a wide range of activities in Massachusetts. He led the choral department at UMASS Lowell for five years. While there, the ensembles doubled in size. He prepared the University Choir for a collaboration with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops on a Sony DVD recording of Handel’s Messiah Rocks! by Jason Howland.
Recently, he finished four successful years as director of choirs at Middleboro High School and two years as Director of Choirs at the highly decorated Oliver Ames High School in Easton. Most recently, he was hired as Director of Choral Studies at Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood, where he leads four choirs and other music classes. He is Director of Music at Christ Congregational Church in Brockton where he oversees a robust music program ranging from youth to adults in choral and instrumental ensembles. Kidd is the founding conductor of World Voices Youth Choir. As an educator and conductor, he has been awarded grants from the state Massachusetts Cultural Council, local cultural councils and the Bayrd Foundation. His long association with the Handel & Haydn Society and Boston Baroque has led him to work with such conductors as Christopher Hogwood, Sir Roger Norrington, Seiji Ozawa, John Finney, Robert Spano, Grant Llewellyn, Harry Christophers, Giselle Ben-Dor, and Martin Pearlman. Mr. Kidd has taken part in many of the world’s most prestigious music festivals including: BBC Proms, Casals (Puerto Rico), Tanglewood, Ravinia, Edinburgh, All-Beethoven Easter Festival (Poland), Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and Boston Early Music Festival. He studied conducting with William Dehning and Robert Halseth at University of the Pacific and completed his master’s degree at New England Conservatory. While at the Conservatory, his mentors included Daniel Pinkham, Craig Smith, Martin Isepp, Nico Castel, and Terry Decima.
Mr. Kidd is returning, this year, as principal conductor of the Vermont Music and Arts Association where, each summer, he led orchestral readings, chamber ensembles, and the Madrigal Singers. A respected voice teacher, he was an adjunct faculty member of New England Conservatory Preparatory School, UMASS/Lowell, Eastern Nazarene College, Boston College, and Phillips Exeter Academy. His students have won many awards and are currently singing in top music programs around the country and abroad. He has taught Song Literature, 20th Century Music History, and Vocal Pedagogy for Eastern Nazarene College, Atlantic Union College and UMASS Lowell.
In addition to his life as a conductor, Mr. Kidd has performed as a tenor soloist with many premiere ensembles including: Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society, Musicians of the Old Post Road, North Shore Philharmonic, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and Coro Allegro. Between Boston Baroque and Handel and Haydn Society, he is present on 11 internationally released albums.
In 2009, Mr. Kidd founded the Boston Singers Relief Fund. This organization provides a financial safety net for professional singers in New England who are facing unexpected hardship. Mr. Kidd is a member of ACDA, NAfME, NATS, Boston Singers Resource, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.
Assistant Conductor, Katrina Faulstich has been singing with Polymnia since 2013 and has been the Assistant Conductor since 2015. Katrina is the Choral and Theater Director at Bedford High School (MA). At BHS she conducts the Honors Choir, Concert Choir, 6th Grade Choir, the extra-curricular a cappella group The Rolling Tones, and teaches Music Theory, Piano, Theater Production, and Drama classes. She also directs BHS’s annual plays and musicals. Her directing credits include Peter and the Starcatcher, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Middletown, Shrek the Musical, Almost, Maine, and Anything Goes. Additionally, she has taught many private piano, voice, and acting students.
She has performed in numerous productions including The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Theater Company of Saugus), The Drowsy Chaperone (Wakefield Repertory Theatre), and Spamalot (Marblehead Little Theater). From 2008-2014, Katrina worked as the Music Director at Wakefield Repertory Youth Theatre’s summer theater camp.
She is trained in classical ballet and studied with Denise Cecere at the Northeast School of Ballet, formerly of Melrose, and performed frequently with the Northeast Youth Ballet.
Katrina holds a B.M. in Music Education from the University of New Hampshire, where she studied piano with Christopher Kies, voice with Sharon Baker, and performed in the choral ensembles under the direction of William Kempster. She is currently pursuing her Master’s in Music Education from the HARTT School at the University of Hartford and is expected to graduate in December of 2017. Katrina is actively involved in MMEA and NAfME. She was recently selected to present a workshop based on the work she does with her choir students in Bedford entitled “The Independent Sight-Singing: Using Google Classroom for Sight- Singing Assignments” at the 2017 MA All State Music Festival in March.
Accompanist, Dorothy Travis, is active in the Greater Boston musical scene as a music director, accompanist, teacher and performer. She has an extensive background in musical theater direction, having prepared the casts and orchestras for dozens of productions. Favorites include Into the Woods, for which she received an EMACT award for music direction, Chorus Line, Evita, The Whiz and West Side Story with Theatre II of Melrose; Candide, Aida, and Putting It Together with French Woods Festival for the Performing Arts in the Catskills; Tommy, Lizzy Borden, Honk, and Damn Yankees with the Stoneham Theatre; Oklahoma, Kiss Me Kate, Les Miserables, Hairspray, In the Heights and Beauty and the Beast with Brimmer and May High School, several memorable shows with Middlesex School in Concord and four Cabarets to benefit the Polymnia Choral Society.
As Past President of the Massachusetts Music Teachers Association (MMTA), Dorothy presided over a nonprofit, professional organization dedicated to maintaining standards of excellence among its member teachers. In 2016, she was chosen as Teacher of the Year by MMTA for her contributions to teaching and to the organization.
In her role as Commissioned Composer Chair for MMTA since 2018, Dorothy supports the creation of new music by American Composers by commissioning a new work and premiering it at the Quad State Conference of MMTA.
In the Melrose community, Dorothy has served on the Melrose Cultural Council since 2013, both as a voting member and as Chair assisting in the distribution of grants which support the arts, humanities, and the sciences.
Dorothy received her Bachelor of Music from the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam where she studied with James Ball and Delores Johnson. She received her Master of Music with a concentration in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Northwestern University studying Performance with Guy Mombert and Piano Pedagogy with Frances Larimer.
In her private piano studio, Dorothy believes in an eclectic approach for each both adult and young students, providing a safe environment in which to cultivate each musician. She blends a combination of singing, ensemble work, sight reading, theory, harmony, technique, and repertoire to motivate students of all ages to find their inner muse. Her students have received recognition and awards from the Beethoven Society Scholarship Recital, MMTA Judged Festivals, and Polymnia’s own Spotlight on High School Talent.