First Parish Music Staff

Music Director, Laura Stanfield Prichard
Laura Stanfield Prichard has directed our music program since 2003, during which we have led significant relief efforts and reconstruction trips to the UU churches of New Orleans. She is a faculty member and staff conductor for the Berkshire Choral Festival and has directed student choirs in Cambridge, Lexington, Lynn, and Marlborough. Since moving to the Boston area from California, Ms. Prichard led the Boston-based Sharing a New Song Chorus on collaborative concert tours of South Africa and Vietnam and conducted the Yale Alumni Chorus in Moscow and the Netherlands. An alumna of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, she performs regularly with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. From 2003-2006, she conducted the award-winning Sängerchor Boston, the oldest German-language choir in the US, and is a Vocal Diction Coach and Accompanist for the New World Chorale and Longwood Symphony.

A graduate of Yale Universtiy and the University of Illinois –Urbana-Champaign, she was a tenured faculty member in music and dance at California State University-East Bay (Hayward) and San Francisco State University for eight years, and has presented lectures at the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and New Century Chamber Orchestra since 1996. In Fall 2007, she performed in Carnegie Hall and Boston's Jordan Hall, directed Amahl & the Night Visitors at First Parish Arlington, directed an 88-student abridged performance of The Pirates of Penzance (Cambridge) and edited/directed Lemony Snicket's newest holiday story for its world premiere staged performance (Arlington). She often appears with her husband Michael, a professional baritone whose recent engagements include the 2007 BSO European Tour, Porgy at MIT's Lincoln Labs and the title role in excerpts from Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov under the direction of Jonathan McPhee with the Boston Ballet and in NEC's Jordan Hall. He was the baritone soloist for the New World Chorale and Clafin Hill Orchestra's 2006 Brahms Requiem, 2008 Pirates of Penzance (Pirate King), and 2008 Mozart Requiem (Lexington Symphony)..
Email laura@firstparish.info

Organist and Pianist, Sarah Haera Tocco
Since her successful debut in 1986 as an accompanist at Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, for which the New York Times cited her as a "sensitive pianist," Sarah Tocco has performed in California, New York, Massachusetts, and Jamaica, as well as toured Louisiana, Brazil, and Vietnam with Sharing a New Song, a community chorus based in Newton. She accompanied the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet Chorus in Hanoi and Haiphong and played Chopin on Vietnamese national television. She accompanied SANS throughout Brazil (including Rio de Janeiro, Ouro Preto, Salvador de Bahia) and was a piano soloist in the historic opera house in Manaus, on the Amazon. (http://www.sharinganewsong.org/brazil2008.htm)

Ms. Tocco has made concerto appearances with the Moorpark College Symphony and the California State University – Los Angeles Symphony and given solo recitals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and repeat performances for the acclaimed concert series at the Newton (MA) Free Library. She holds both undergraduate and master's degree in Performance Piano from the Manhattan School of Music in New York. She performs frequently through out New England area, both as soloist and accompanist, and currently has her debut CD release with the music of Brahms, Chopin and Schubert -- an offering that is becoming a music lover's favorite. Ms. Tocco continues to demonstrate her deep, expressive interpretation of Romantic music on stage, and is currently working with four choral groups: the Broad Cove Choral, Unicorn Singers, Sharing a New Song, and Boston College High Choir which involve international concert tours, along with her frequent solo and chamber recitals. Her next solo concert at First Parish Arlington will be Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008.

Sarah Tocco teaches privately in Newton where she lives with her daughter, Annabelle.
Email sarah@firstparish.info