The MIT Women's Chorale

Organist/harpsichordist/harmoniumist/conductor/arranger Kevin Galiè is a native of Philadelphia and a citizen of both the United States and Italy, his family being of Italy’s Central Adriatic Coast.  Mr. Galiè graduated from law school, placing him in company with many lawyer/musicians, including Schumann, Berio, Stravinsky, Tchaikowsky, Handel, Fritz Reiner, and Hildegard Behrens. Throughout his law studies, Mr. Galiè studied and performed as a musician, and soon thereafter entered the Boston Conservatory for his Masters’ Degree in Organ Performance.

For the last ten years Mr. Galiè has served as Music Director of the Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, MA. He is the principal organ/celesta/harmonium player for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra; principal guest organist in residence on the historic Fisk organ at Old West Church, Boston, Yuko Hayashi, Music Director; co-Music Director of Boston’s Italian North End St. Leonard’s and Sacred Heart churches; adjunct faculty at Simmons College; guest lecturer at the Longy School of Music and Rhode Island School of Design; newly appointed director of the 50-voice MIT Women’s Chorale; and founder and music director of the Italian repertoire Coro-Dante and the Coro-Dante voci bianchi at the Dante Alighieri Society, Kendall Square, Cambridge. In 2007 Mr. Galiè co-wrote a presentation on church music and acoustics that he presented at the American Society of Acoustical Engineers in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Mr. Galiè has performed with every orchestra in Boston, and was the organist and harmoniumist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1996 until 2003, when his musical activities in Italy and Europe became increasingly demanding.  Mr. Galiè is featured playing the organ on the Boston Pops recording, A Splash of Pops, Keith Lockhart, conducting.  In 2000-2001 Mr. Galiè was responsible for prompting the Boston Symphony Orchestra to restore its historic Aeolian-Skinner organ, introducing the BSO to the Connecticut restoration firm, Foley-Baker, and being the final presenter of the organ to the family that funded the 2004 restoration, Jack Bethards, chief tonal consultant.

For the second year in a row, in October, 2008, Mr. Galiè, played a solo organ recital immediately before playing organ with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, David MacKenzie, Music Director/Conductor.  For these performances, he played the giant 1912, 4-manual Casavant organ in the cavernous Saint Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford. The following day he was featured in a full-page photo at the organ concert, with church, orchestra, and chorus in the background, on the front page of the South Coast Standard newspaper.  In November, he played his 1897 Etienne & Fils French harmonium, together with Randall Hodgkinson and Leslie Amper on the piano, with the Masterworks Chorale, performing Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle.

 In addition to conducting and playing organ and other keyboard instruments, Mr. Galiè is a composer/arranger. He has produced a book of arrangements for organ and two French horns. Mr. Galiè has emerged as one of the pre-eminent arrangers and restorers, from original and missing manuscripts, of the great non-Tchaikowsky classical Russian ballets. His works are published under the label “Editions Anna-Marie Holmes.”   His orchestrations have been performed by/in the American Ballet Theatre, Teatro alla Scala of Milano, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, the National Ballet Company of Belgium, the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden, the Kennedy Center of Washington D.C., and the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts Metropolitan Opera House of New York City, and in Japan.  In the spring of 2008, Mr. Galiè worked with the Rome Opera as orchestrator/arranger and assistant conductor and, while with the Rome Opera, orchestrated a new version of Adam’s  Le Corsaire.  Mr. Galiè has been engaged to work with La Scala in Milan on a similar project in 2010.  

In the summer of 2008, in addition to playing in Tanglewood, Mr. Galiè performed solo organ concerts in Italy, most notably on the newly restored Ruffatti organ at the Santuario Beato Bernardo in Offida, to a sold-out audience and megatron (large screen) presentation.

Mr. Galiè performed the Organ Concerto in G minor of Poulenc in the autumn of  2008, in a concert hosted by Mastersingers by the Sea, Falmouth, MA.  He has also performed the Poulenc with Boston Ballet, Jonathon McPhee music director, Mark Churchill conducting, in a series of 12 performances, to the choreography of Mark Morris; on the historic E.P. Biggs Skinner Organ at the Harvard Church in Brookline, MA; and in Italy, at the 12th century church of San Francesco, on the 3-manual Tambourini organ, in Ascoli Piceno, Italy.