Dr. Priscilla Holt, Flute Choir Conductor
PRISCILLA OCHRAN HOLT, Ph.D., is a Pennsylvania native, who has resided in North Texas for over three decades. She has performed with orchestras throughout North America and Europe; served on the faculties of universities in Texas and Oklahoma; built an award winning orchestra program for Frisco ISD; is a published author and arranger; is active as a clinician and adjudicator, adjudicator; and loves teaching students how to play the flute!
She began playing the flute in 6th grade, studied with Marge Veleta, Principal Flutist of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company, and in 11th grade she started participating in summer flute and chamber music seminars hosted by the famous French flutist, Marcel Moyse. At Duquesne University, she studied flute performance with Bernard Goldberg, Principal Flutist of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and she was a member of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony. She completed a Master of Music degree at the New England Conservatory in Boston where she studied with Boston Pops Principal Flutist, James Pappoutsakis, and Boston Pops Piccolo Player, Lois Schaeffer. Ms. Holt performed orchestral and chamber music throughout the Boston area, notably at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Upon returning to Philadelphia, she formed the Cantabile Chamber Players, a woodwind piano trio that performed throughout southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey and which received a grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. She performed Broadway shows at the Valley Forge Music Fair and later was a member of American Theater Productions and toured the United States and Canada in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and Michael Stewart and Cy Coleman’s Barnum.
Dr. Ochran Holt received her Ph.D. degree in musicology from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Her dissertation topic was inspired by the summers she had spent in Brattleboro, Vermont studying chamber music with Marcel Moyse. Concurrently, she performed with the Boca Raton Symphony, the Ft. Lauderdale Symphony, the Miami Chamber Orchestra, the Miami Ballet and the Gold Coast Opera.
Dr. Ochran Holt has participated in and attended master-classes by legendary flutists Jean Pierre Rampal, Julius Baker, Jeanne Baxtresser, James Galway and James Walker. She has also studied piccolo and flute with Philadelphia Orchestra members, John Krell, Murray Panitz; Dallas Symphony members, Deborah Baron, Jean Larsen and Boston Symphony member, Leone Buyse.
Today, Dr. Priscilla Ochran Holt is an active teacher, performer, author, arranger, clinician, adjudicator and conductor. Summers are devoted to performing with the Texas Winds Musical Outreach Flute Trio, performing in Italy with the International Lyric Academy Orchestra and coordinating the ILA Chamber Music program and watching her daughter, a professional golfer, play in tournaments across the United States.
