Deborah Friauff

A versatile musician, Dr. Deborah Friauff performs professionally as a soprano, organist and conductor. As Director of Music and Organist at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor, she oversees five parish choirs, organizes an annual concert series, and plans and executes music for all liturgical events in parish life, including a chanted weekly service of Compline. As an organist, she has performed across the country in venues such as the San Anselmo Organ Festival in California and the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival in Charleston South Carolina, as well as for Conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society, and part of her performance at the latter convention has been issued by the OHS label in a CD entitled Historic Organs of Michigan.

As a singer who has focused almost exclusively on early music, she has studied Gregorian chant at St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana with Columba Kelly, OSB, and at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota with Anthony Ruff, OSB. Further studies took place over three summers at the University of British Columbia’s Early Music Vancouver Festival, where she was a participant in both the Baroque and Medieval vocal music programmes, studying with soprano Ellen Hargis and Benjamin Bagby of Sequentia, respectively. She has also coached with Frances Brockington,  Jane Heirich and Wendall Bloom,  and has sung soprano in the professional early music vocal ensembles VOX and Voci dell’ Anima. She founded the St. Thomas Chant Schola in Ann Arbor, and has also directed the early music ensembles Sine Nomine of East Lansing, Michigan, and the Ann Arbor Grail Singers of Ann Arbor, Michigan.