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 teaches Music in Western Civilization and Humanities classes at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and speaks regularly for the Boston Baroque, Boston Ballet, and San Francisco Symphony. She also teaches two levels of chorus for the Dracut Schools and instrumental/music theory lessons at St. Agnes School (Arlington) and St. Charles School (Woburn).

Since moving to Massachusetts in 2003, she has directed gold and silver medal-winning student choirs in Cambridge, Lexington, Lynn, and Marlborough and was the Director of Fine Arts for the Arlington Schools in 2008-09. Ms. Prichard led the Newton-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. 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. She and her husband Mike perform regularly with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the New World Chorale, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of Yale University 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. This is her seventh year as Director of Music for First Parish Arlington, and she would be happy to hear from you if you'd like to contribute to our program.
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 coached 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 degrees in Performance Piano from the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Ms. Tocco 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. She 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 tours Itally in November 2008, along with her frequent solo and chamber recitals. Her most recent solo concert at First Parish Arlington was Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008.

Sarah Tocco directs the music program at the Cyrus Dallin School in Arlington and teaches privately in Newton where she lives with her daughter, Annabelle.
Email sarah@firstparish.info