Biography
Raised in southern Illinois, Laura Stanfield Prichard began piano lessons with her grandmother, Margaret Jean Wilhoit Stanfield, at age five. She continued piano studies with jazz pianist Moke Owens, and participated in the Paris, Illinois bands program on oboe and piccolo under Joseph Gill and Warren Sperry. She was the flute/piccolo section leader during the Paris Bands' 1984 Hawaii Trip (televised halftime show at the Aloha Bowl), and for performances in Chicago Bear's Games at Soldier's Field, Chicago, in 1984 and 1985. She majored in music and foreign languages (German and Russian) at Yale University and was an active conductor and choral singer under the guidance of Fenno Heath and Marguerite Shaw.
A graduate vocal student of William Warfield at the University of Illinois, and one of the last students of Jan De Gaetani, she has since performed as a solo recitalist, conductor, and choral singer in the United States and Europe. She has been featured on radio and television broadcasts, notably a June 1990 broadcast of the Yale Glee Club Chamber Singers on Radio Free Europe (as conductor) and an April 1997 documentary on UC-Berkeley's production's of Much Ado About Nothing, which was performed in the newly-reconstructed Globe Theatre in England (dramaturg/Renaissance dance choreographer).
After completing her graduate studies in Musicology and German at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Prichard taught for eight years in the San Francisco area, and now resides near Concord, Massachusetts. She continues to lecture for the San Francisco Symphony and write program notes for the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Last summer, she joined the staff at Middlesex School Summer Arts, in Concord, MA, teaching musical theater, blues, mixed chorus, and instrumental music. Since Fall 2003, she has directed the Sängerchor Boston, a German-speaking choir based in Walpole, MA, directs the instrumental ensembles and Adult Choir for the First Parish Church of Arlington, MA, and is the Program Editor and Musicologist-in-Residence for the Berkshire Choral Festival.
Additional Notes 1990-2003
From 1995-2003, Prichard lectured frequently for the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Her program notes for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and San Francisco Choral Society have been used for concert programs, websites, and compact disc recordings.
She served on the music and dance faculties at San Francisco State University (2001-03) and California State University - Hayward (1995-2003), teaching courses in choral music, musicology, music theory, and dance. She directed the music program at Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church in Walnut Creek, CA (1998-2003), where she collaborated with musicians from the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Contra Costa Wind Symphony, the Berkeley Lyric Opera Orchestra, and the Pleasanton Community Band. An active conductor and vocalist, Prichard is a former member of the Philharmonia Baroque Chorale and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, and performed with the San Francisco Chamber Singers, a professional chamber choir specializing in new music and commissioned works (1998-2003, in 2003 the groups changed its name to Volti).
In 2001-02, Prichard and her husband Michael sang in a televised concert by the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, a live broadcast of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, produced by KQED-TV. The DVD of this event won a 2002 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Classical-Dance Program. The Prichards also sung on the SF Symphony CDs: Charles Ives - An American Journey (Delos, 2002) and Voices 1900/2000 - A Choral Journey through the Twentieth Century (Delos, 2002), which was nominated for a Grammy, and for which she wrote the liner notes.
Laura Prichard actively promotes music by contemporary and local composers, and commissioned several choral works while a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She was an active member of the staff at Marin Catholic High School 2001-03, and led advanced music ensembles on tours to New York (February 2002), Las Vegas (April 2002), Boston (January 2003), Chicago (February 2003), and Santa Cruz (April 2003). In 2003, the IAJE awarded her a special citation for Excellence in Programming for Jazz Ensemble.
An alumna of Yale University, Laura Prichard acted as singer and as an assistant to chorus director Dean Robert Blocker for the Yale Alumni Chorus Kremlin Invitation Tour. On April 8, 2003, the group of eighty singers presented a concert of Russian patriotic songs and opera choruses for Vladimir Putin, which was broadcast on Russian national television (the first time any Americans have ever performed in the Kremlin). The concert was conducted by Constantine Orbelian and featured the Moscow Chamber Orchestra with singer Dmitri Hvorostovsky. She is now a regular member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Boston, MA and at Tanglewood.