Cathy Billington

Biography

Believing that music and art has been a compass for her life since she first asked for violin lessons at the age of 4, Cathy is a multifaceted arts champion, development leader, and musician. Born and residing in Calgary, AB (“Moh’kinsstis”) on the traditional territory of Treaty 7, she lives an integrated life surrounded by an amazing community that is nurtured through music and the arts.

Professionally, Cathy has established a successful career in arts development. Her experience has grown exponentially over the past decade with both the nature of the positions that she has held and the size of the organizations she has represented (Calgary Philharmonic, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Mount Royal University, University of Calgary), connecting philanthropic goals of the community to the needs and priorities of the organizations. Presently, she is the Director of Development, Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, her alma mater (BMus’10).

Cathy recently completed her seven-year term (2016-2024) on the Board of Directors for Luminous Voices, Calgary's professional chamber choir.  She was appointed as President and Board Chair in 2020 during the height of the pandemic and worked alongside a dedicated community of staff, board volunteers, and musicians to nurture the special spirit of the choir while identifying opportunities and strategies for growth to secure a sustainable future for the organization. As a result, Luminous Voices hired their first Executive Director in 2025 following extensive strategic planning and funding applications that was stewarded under Cathy's leadership. 

As a classically trained violinist who benefited from the pedagogical excellence of the Mount Royal Conservatory (Sue Jane Bryant, Ben Neumann, Alla Magid) and the University of Calgary’s Bachelor of Music Program (Edmond Agopian, John Lowry), her life-long performance and recording journey has most recently brought her to the Calgary-based western swing band the Red Hot Hayseeds as a founding member and fiddle player (2017-present). She is proud of the most recent recording How the West Was Swung (2023) which she recorded when her second child was just 2 months old. She has performed and recorded coast-to-coast as a fiddle player with Canadian artists from Vancouver, BC to Cape Breton, NS.

In raising her family, Cathy is guided by the belief that music and the Arts are catalysts for development, learning, and living a fulfilled life surrounded by a strong, creative, and diverse community.