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The American choral conductor, Priscilla Stevens French, earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Beloit College and received her Master’s degree in Choral Conducting from the New England Conservatory of Music studying under Lorna Cooke deVaron. She spent her junior year at Manchester College, Oxford, England, studying organ and musicology.
Priscilla Stevens French was chairman of the Music Department at Spence School in New York City. While living in New York she studied conducting with Amy Kaiser. She has served as past president of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Choral Directors Association and Eastern Division chairman for women’s choirs.
Priscilla Stevens French moved to New Hampshire in 1985. She was founding Artistic Director of Portsmouth Women’s Chorus (= PWC) for 21 seasons, led the transformation of PWC into a new mixed chorus, Portsmouth Pro Musica (= PPM), in the spring of 2006.
Her many achievements with the PWC Chorus:
- A multimedia presentation of “Song of Survival” at The Music Hall (1995)
- A ten-day concert tour to England (1998)
- One of 12 auditioned choirs invited to perform at the Eastern Division AC DA Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. (2000)
- PWC’s 20th anniversary concert at The Music Hall, including a commissioned work by Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker (2005)
Her many achievements with the PPM Chorus:
- Conducting at SummerSings. Priscilla has conducted at the Great Waters Music Festival Summer Sings in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, 2004-2007, the Nashua Choral Society Sing in 2009, and the Paul Madore Summer Sings in Salem, Massachusetts in 2011 and 2012.
- Co-producing annual Messiah Sing. Priscilla co-produced the annual Messiah-Sing at The Music Hall with Wendell Purrington for a decade.
- Leading 21 singers on tour to Central Europe in 2015. She led a touring version of PPM, consisting of 21 singers, on a tour of Central Europe in the summer of 2015. The tour included performances in churches and cathedrals in Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and Prague.
Since founding Portsmouth Pro Musica in 2006, Priscilla Stevens French has conducted several masterworks from the mixed chorus repertory: Charpentier: Midnight Mass for Christmas; Arnesen: Wound in the Water; Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms; Johannes Brahms: A German Requiem; Barnett: The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass; Benjamin Britten: Rejoice in the Lamb; Dvorak: Mass in D Major; J. Haydn: Creation and Missa Brevis; Felix Mendelssohnn: Elijah; W.A. Mozart: Requiem and Coronation Mass; Thompson: A Peaceable Kingdom; George Frideric Handel: Coronation Anthems; Purcell: Dido and Aeneas; Francis Poulenc: Gloria; Puccini: Messa di Gloria; J.S. Bach: Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) and Cantata BWV 140; John Rutter: Gloria and Feel the Spirit; Antonio Vivaldi: Dixit Dominus; Karl Jenkins: The Armed Man; Orff: Carmina Burana for the group’s 25th anniversary concerts in 2010. |
