Jane Ring Frank is pleased to be in her 15th year as Conductor of the Concord Women’s Chorus, a 50-voice ensemble based in Concord, Massachusetts. Concord Women’s Chorus prides itself on rehearsing and performing challenging, new music written especially for women.
Frank is also the Artistic Director and Founder of Boston Secession—an eclectic and unique professional choral ensemble dedicated to making music new. She began her conducting career on meeting her conducting mentor, Frank Pooler (then Director of Choral Activities) at California State University, Long Beach. His specialty was avant-garde music and unique programming.
She then went on to graduate with degrees in accompanying and conducting. She became associate conductor of the 70-voice University Choir, staff pianist, lecturer, and musical director/conductor for the Department of Theatre Arts. She also worked as a repetiteur with professional opera companies in Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles music Center Opera and the Long Beach Opera Company. Other artistic mentors include Randall Behr (former conductor and music director of the Department of Vocal Arts, Juilliard Opera Center and former resident conductor, Los Angeles Music Center Opera), the late Michael Carson (conductor, Lake George Opera), and Menahem Pressler (Beaux Arts Trio).
Frank moved to Boston in 1991 to conduct at Harvard University and five years later founded Boston Secession. In addition to her aggressive conducting responsibilities, Frank is a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, a faculty member at Emerson College, and Director of Music at the First Congregational Church in Winchester. She has also just been appointed Conductor for ECS Publishing Company’s professional recording choral ensemble, Philovox.
Last year, Frank conducted and produced her first CD with Boston Secession - Afterlife: German Choral Meditations on Mortality, featuring the works of Distler, Brahms, Bach and composer-in-residence, Ruth Lomon. In 2002, Frank had the privilege of producing Ruth Lomon’s CD, Songs of Remembrance, a song cycle based on poetry of the Holocaust, featuring Jayne West, Pamela Dellal, Frank Kelley, Donald Boothman and pianist Donald Berman.
From 1998–2003, Frank was Director of Chapel Music at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, where she worked extensively with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. She also taught and conducted at Harvard/Radcliffe College for many years. Frank has toured Vienna, Austria, Munich, Prague, Stockholm, Poland and the United States extensively as a guest lecturer, choral/instrumental conductor, and pianist.