Elizabeth Kahn, one of the four founders of CVNC, has died at her home in Cary. She was 78.

She was quite simply one of the most amazing people the author of this brief remembrance has known.

She majored in voice and piano at Brandeis and continued there as a grad student in musicology. Her doctorate, from Harvard, in Comparative Literature, created, as she herself wrote, “a special niche in the relationship between music and poetry.” She was also an amateur oboist.

She established with her husband Joseph an important classical music program note business, Word Pros, basing its extensive archive on the collected works of her father Paul, an important NY musician and critic, but she hardly limited herself to this pursuit, instead giving generously of her time and expertise to the NC Bach Festival, the Raleigh Civic Symphony, Arts Access, the NC Master Chorale, and numerous other non-profits throughout our region. In more recent years she led Chamber Music Raleigh through the dark days of the pandemic, helping ensure that the organization not only survived but grew and expanded (to Charlotte) in the process.

She and her husband were enthusiastic arts consumers and as a working team served as distinguished commentators on the local scene, writing for IndyWeek and then CVNC; their reviews for CVNC alone helped document culture in our community for eight significant years, starting in 2001.

Her arts interests were not confined to performance – she was also a long-time docent at the NC Museum of Art.

And they were till just a short time ago inveterate and indefatigable travelers, rarely if ever choosing likely destinations but instead exploring byways throughout the globe – and then entertaining local friends with amazing tales of their adventures.

In addition to her husband she is survived by a daughter and a grandson and several of her husband’s children from a previous marriage. Our hearts go out to her extended family and her numerous friends and colleagues throughout the world.

We will link to the formal obit and provide details of future memorials in due course.