Kalya Yannatos is honored to begin her first season in service to Marlboro Music, having previously volunteered to usher when she first arrived in the area in 2002. Kalya grew up in a family of artists and musicians in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was profoundly influenced by music from a young age, particularly the intimacy and power of chamber music.
Kalya brings to Marlboro a rich and varied background in the arts. For two decades, she worked as a professional dancer and choreographer based in New York City, performing the work of a wide range of choreographers on national and international stages. Deeply committed to the arts as a vehicle for connection and transformation, she led workshops and performed in hundreds of public schools, community centers, juvenile facilities, and senior centers across New York and Los Angeles, while also teaching in studio settings. Her choreographic work frequently involved interdisciplinary collaborations with musicians, filmmakers, poets, and visual artists—including a commission with her father, composer James Yannatos, for an interactive duet for French horn and dancer, inspired by an earlier work for soprano and dancer.
After moving to Marlboro, she taught dance as an adjunct at Marlboro College, among other area schools. Transitioning into arts administration, she served as Arts Department chair at The Putney School, followed by Director of the Arts at Choate Rosemary Hall. In addition to teaching and running Choate’s arts department, she ran the Paul Mellon Arts Center, where she produced annual performing arts seasons and curated visual arts exhibitions. She later returned to The Putney School as Director of Development, broadening her experience in institutional advancement and building community partnerships—skills she now brings to Marlboro Music.
Kalya is grateful for the opportunity to serve Marlboro Music’s mission and to steward its extraordinary legacy in collaboration with such dedicated colleagues and extraordinary artists. She is excited to continue the work of enlivening Marlboro’s creative campus on Potash Hill in an intentional, mission aligned way, ensuring the ethos of Marlboro Music reverberates far beyond the summer season.