Lee Elman, 86, of Manhattan and Great Barrington died at Mount Sinai Hospital on November 27, 2022, from complications following heart surgery. Passionate about theater and classical music, Lee cofounded the Aston Magna Music Festival, the country’s longest-running summer festival of early music performed on period instruments, now in its 50th year.
He is survived by his beloved longtime companion, Judy Ney; his daughter, Alexandra Foley; his cousin, Esther Schwartz; and many devoted friends. His two marriages ended in divorce.
Lee had a rare ability to seek and celebrate the good in others and never had an unkind word to say about anyone. He was born on June 6, 1936, in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton. While in college, he dined in Spain with Ernest Hemingway, one of his literary heroes, who inspired him to endow the Lee M. Elman Class of 1958 Hemingway Prize at Princeton. Lee was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bologna before earning two degrees from Yale Law School.
In 1979, he founded Elman Investors, a real estate investment firm that created a niche by owning government-occupied property. His successes in business allowed him to be a generous patron of the arts. Lee volunteered his time as a Cultural Affairs Commissioner for New York City under Mayors Abe Beame and Ed Koch, and he was a member of the New York State Council of the Arts for 22 years. He attended between 70 to 80 plays and 100 musical events every year and relished occasional front-row opera seats at Spoleto and Bayreuth.
A genial and expansive host, Lee entertained at Aston Magna, his country house in the Berkshires, which was perhaps the love of his life. By the swimming pool, he installed a sacrificial altar from Herculaneum inscribed in Latin: “Sol redit tempus nunquam” (The sun returns, time never). Lee was a keen equestrian until six years ago, when a series of broken bones convinced him to stop riding. “Life is dangerous,” he often said, “and we never know when it will end, only that it will.”
