Eric Simpson

Director of Development

Eric Simpson joins BMP after two years as Director of Development for Opera Lafayette, where he helped lay the foundation for a thirtieth-anniversary campaign to see the company through its first ever artistic leadership transition. He previously served as Chief Development Officer at the Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study, a nonprofit devoted to promoting the study of the classical humanities and making them more accessible to a wider audience. From 2012 to 2020 he was active as an arts journalist, both as an editor and as a writer, with more than 400 published reviews and articles about the classical music scene in New York and beyond.

Eric holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in Classics from Yale College. Still a practicing violinist, he was a finalist in WQXR's 2016 "Moonlighters" competition for amateur musicians. A sometime actor, Eric is a graduate of HB Studio's CORE conservatory program. He is an avid listener of comic song, particularly the works of Tom Lehrer and Noël Coward.