Executive Director Alan Fey joined the NPO in February 2019 as Operations Assistant, and was named its first full-time staff in July 2024. Alan is an arts administrator, percussionist, composer, arranger, and conductor who specializes in performance logistics and performing solo and chamber music. In addition to his role with the NPO, Alan is Co-Founder and Director of Make Music Nashville and has previously worked with GRAMMY-Nominated ALIAS Chamber Ensemble and Portara Ensemble. He is also actively involved in advocating for equity in arts and cultural funding, especially from local government funding sources.

Based in Nashville, his performing focus is on the creation of new music, having been involved in the commissioning and world premieres of over thirty works. Alan has performed in spaces ranging from the Zeitgeist Art Gallery to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center to Carnegie Hall. Alan studied primarily with NPO Music Director Chris Norton while earning his Bachelor & Master of Music degrees in percussion performance. He spent a year in Dresden studying with Bernhard Schmidt, timpanist with the Dresdner Staatskapelle at the Hochschule für Musik, which included multiple performances at the Dresden Semperoper. A core musician with ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, Alan has also performed with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Opera Orchestra, INTERSECTION, Paramount Chamber Players, as a concerto soloist with the NPO (he won our first Concerto Competition!) and Belmont Symphony Orchestras, in various chamber settings, and as a soloist and clinician throughout the southeast.

Alan directed the Nashville premiere of John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit in 2015. Alan has arranged over a dozen works for solo voice, choir, percussion, organ, piano, double bass, handbells, and combinations of two or more of those. He recently completed a full-length Latin requiem mass for a cappella chorus.