Artistic director Priscilla Herreid is a musician in the ancient and living tradition of woodwind doubling. Her formative years studying recorder at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School led her to the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, where she began playing the oboe. The daughter of musicians rooted in Philadelphia’s music scene, she was exposed to the city’s vast musical landscape. Her time studying with Louis Rosenblatt at Temple University deepened her love of the oboe and orchestral repertoire, and playing renaissance wind instruments in Temple’s collegium felt like home.
As the Temple collegium was led by Piffaro co-director Bob Wiemken, she was led to direct interaction with the group – whom she’d been listening to intensely for much of her childhood – and after further studies and occasional subbing, she became a member of Piffaro in 2007. Now as Artistic Director, Priscilla has the honor of continuing Piffaro’s mission of bringing the renaissance wind band and its repertoire to ever wider audiences. Passionate about sharing this slice of our musical history, Priscilla is also an avid educator, teaching at the Madison and Amherst Early Music Festivals and coaching existing ensembles in the art of playing renaissance polyphony – a form she believes is inherently satisfying for amateurs and professionals at every level.
Priscilla regularly performs on renaissance winds, early oboes, and recorder with many other prominent early music ensembles. Her appearances include The Handel + Haydn Society, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Tenet Vocal Artists, The Metropolitan Opera, Boston Baroque, The Newberry Consort, The Dark Horse Consort, The Sebastians, The Gabrieli Consort, The City Musick, The Waverly Consort, Les Délices, New York Baroque Inc., Ruckus, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and Mr. Jones & the Engines of Destruction. Recent engagements include her creation and guest-direction of a show about German medieval song for Blue Heron, and a performance of the Bach Concerto for Violin and Oboe with Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. Priscilla also accompanies silent films with Hesperus, sings the Latin Mass around New York City, and was part of the onstage band for the Broadway productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III starring Mark Rylance.
Priscilla’s playing has been called “downright amazing” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The New York Times has praised her “soaring recorder, gorgeously played…” She is a graduate of Temple University, where she was a student of the late Louis Rosenblatt, and The Juilliard School, where she was a member of the inaugural class of the Historical Performance program and a student of Gonzalo Ruiz.