Fay Foster

Fay Foster (November 8, 1886 – April 17, 1960) was an American pianist, composer, and teacher. Biography Foster was born in Leavenworth, Kansas on November 8, 1886. She was a child prodigy, performing publicly by the age of 5, and professionally as organist and choir director by age 12. In Chicago she studied piano under William Hall Sherwood, voice under Mme Dove-Boitte, and theory with Frederick Grant Gleason. At the age of 17 she went on a national tour playing the piano for Sherwood’s Grand Opera Company. Following her Chicago studies, at the age of 19, she was appointed director of the Grand Prairie Seminary’s Conservatory of Music in Onarga, Illinois. In 1897 she opened a studio in Chicago’s Steinway Hall to teach piano and theory. In 1899 she travelled to Europe for twelve years, studying further under Heinrich Schwartz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Sofie Menter in Munich, and under Theodore Wiehmeyer, Alfred Reisenauer, and Salomon Jadassohn at the Leipzig Conservatory. She studied singing under Siga Garso, Hans Weinhoppel and Alexander Heinemann. She performed opera for two years in Italy. In 1910, Berlin’s Die Woche sponsored an international contest for a waltz modelled on the