Kate Salfelder is a versatile administrator, composer, and educator. She joined Blue Heron in June 2025 as General Manager, and has served as Director of Marketing and Communications at the New School of Music, as well as in communications, project management, and finance roles at MIT, The Chestnut Hill School, and Langwater Farm.

As a composer, Kate engages late-Medieval and Renaissance polyphony in conversations with 21st-century techniques; she borrows both literally from chansons, motets, and masses, as well as more liberally from Renaissance-era forms and structures. Three of her wind ensemble works — Cathedrals, Crossing Parallels, and Reminiscence — are published by Boosey & Hawkes and have been performed by over three hundred ensembles at the nation’s leading universities and conservatories.

She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the New England Conservatory and a Master of Music from Yale University. Kate maintains a small private studio where she teaches keyboard harmony and counterpoint. Previously, she served on NEC’s composition faculty and as Lecturer in Music Theory at MIT. In her spare time, she can be found realizing figured bass lines and dabbling at the organ.

Contact Kate: kate@blueheron.org