Cincinnati’s May Festival Announces 2025 Festival Director

The GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Renée Fleming will assume the role for the next concert season

Founded in 1873, the May Festival collaborates with the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra each year to present international guest artists in an array of productions. Among the choral works that have premiered at the Festival include J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and Britten’s Gloriana. 

For its 2025 edition, the Festival has announced the five-time GRAMMY Award-winner and celebrated soprano Renée Fleming as its new director. 

Inspired by Fleming’s interest in connections between music, the arts, and cognitive neuroscience, the new Festival edition was co-curated by the May Festival Director of Choruses Matthew Swanson alongside Fleming.

Fleming’s career includes historic performances at events including the Super Bowl XLVIII, 2008 Olympic Games, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, alongside her recent role as Goodwill Ambassador for the Arts and Health appointed by the World Health Organization. 

She is a 2013 National Medal of Arts recipient, a 2023 Kennedy Center Honoree, and has received 18 GRAMMY nominations and five wins. In 2016, she was appointed Artistic Advisor for the Kennedy Center, where she championed intersections between health and the arts. 

Additionally, she has led the Sound Health initiative — a gathering of neuroscientists, music therapists, and arts practitioners to explore the effects of the arts on well-being. In turn, she created Music and the Mind to explore music therapy and cognitive neuroscience; since 2017, she has presented this program to over 60 cities globally, earning her the Research!America Rosenfeld Award. 

The 2025 May Festival will open on May 16, 2025, with Verdi’s Requiem Mass performed by the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with conductor Ramón Tebar. 

Festival highlights include Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light featuring Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry with visuals by Georgia O’Keeffe; Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene featuring Fleming; and Chasing the Dawn: A Choral Journey featuring the May Festival Chorus and Youth Chorus, May Festival Chamber Choir, and the Cincinnati Boychoir Ambassadors. Among other events, Fleming will also lead a voice masterclass and a panel discussion on the healing power of music. 

“It is our honor and privilege to welcome five-time Grammy Award winner and renowned soprano Renée Fleming as our 2025 Festival Director,” said Swanson in the press release. “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. I warmly invite everyone to join Renée, the singers of the May Festival Choruses, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for a Festival to remember.”

“I’m honored to serve as Festival Director for the 2025 May Festival, and to collaborate with Matthew Swanson and the Chorus,” Fleming expressed. “Cincinnati is famous for its vibrant music scene, as well as its discerning and engaged audience, giving us the opportunity to offer new and unexpected musical narratives alongside revered works. Beyond music’s power to express the most profound ideas and feelings, we are learning more every day about its enormous potential to improve our health and well-being. The Festival is programmed with those goals in mind, and I invite everyone to join us for a week of powerful, transformative music-making.”