Margaret FAIRLIE-KENNEDY

Family-Placed Death Notice

FAIRLIE-KENNEDY, Margaret Margaret Carrick Fairlie-Kennedy died at her home in Ithaca, New York on December 7, 2013. Margaret was born on March 27, 1925 to Andrew Miller Fairlie, Sr. and Lucia (Lillie) Cabiness Peeples Fairlie in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and held a Masters degree from Converse College School of Music. She was a composer of music who wrote for various chamber groups, orchestra, contemporary dance and mixed media. Among her awards and grants were those from The National Foundation for the Arts, The National Foundation for the Humanities, the Georgia Commission on the Arts and the Cornell Council for Creative and Performing Arts. Her commissioned compositions include those for Bennington and Agnes Scott Colleges, the New Arts Gallery of Atlanta, the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, Cornell University Theater Arts Department and several choreographers. Among many groups performing Fairlie-Kennedy music were the Alabama Symphony, the Atlanta Chamber Players, and the Relache Ensemble in Philadelphia. Sites where her music was performed include the Eastman School of Music, Carnegie Weil Recital Hall, the Society of Composers, Inc., the National Conferences at Florida International and Syracuse Universities and abroad in Paris, Uppsala and the International Conference for Women in Beijing, A composer of great critical acclaim, Fairlie-Kennedy's Four Images for Piano was reviewed by the New York Times as a work that "makes expressive use of a single 12 tone row offered in permutations that allow for movements of greatly differing character ... eloquence and energy ... vibrant, atmospheric, and dreamy." Her music was performed as the winner for composition at the New York Women Composers, the Tampa Bay Composers Forum and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony's Maxwell Parish competitions . She was Composer in Residence for Dance and Theater Arts at Bennington College and Cornell University and worked with noted choreographers Takehiro Ueyama in New York, Bill Bayles at Bennington and Peggy Lawler at Cornell. Fairlie-Kennedy's recordings include Summer Solstice, her composition for small orchestra featured in the album Dances for Eternity, and Undertow, in the album Mosaic (both by Navona Records). She studied film-making at Ithaca College and filmed and recorded music and dance of tribal populations in India and Pakistan and village dances in Sri Lanka with her husband, Kenneth A. R. Kennedy professor emeritus of anthropology at Cornell University. They were married in 1969 in Atlanta. Margaret was a beloved wife, sister, aunt and friend. She was preceded in death by her sister Lillian Fairlie. She is survived by her husband Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, twin sister Lucia Walker Fairlie Pulgram and brother in law William L. Pulgram of Atlanta, brother Andrew Miller Fairlie, Jr and sister in law Mary Ann Sherger Fairlie of St. Petersburg, FL and twelve nieces and nephews. Margaret's funeral is scheduled for Monday, December 16 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Ithaca, NV.