Artistic Director and Conductor

 S. Bryan Priddy

Bryan Priddy is the director of music ministries at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, which is the largest Presbyterian congregation in North America.  He directs the church’s chancel and chamber choirs, serves as an executive staff member and provides leadership in worship planning. He joined the staff in 2002. 

Priddy holds a bachelor of music degree from Georgia State University, and graduate degrees in music from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, and the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.  In addition, he completed all doctoral course work in choral music and literature at Arizona State University. During his residency at Arizona State University, Priddy served as a faculty associate and teaching assistant in the school of music, providing leadership as conductor and assistant conductor of the University Choir, as well as developing a conducting curriculum and teaching undergraduate choral conducting students.  He also taught on the artistic faculty at the Arizona School for the Arts in Phoenix, working with middle school students.

 Priddy brings more than 25 years of choral experience to the Choral Guild of Atlanta.  Prior to coming to Atlanta, he served as director of choral activities for five years at Whitworth College in Spokane, WA.  During his tenure there, he completed four compact disc recordings with the Whitworth Choir, one of the Northwest’s premiere collegiate choirs.  He directed the choir in appearances at regional Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) conventions, and directed the Trouveres, a select women’s choir.  He also taught courses in advanced conducting, ear training, secondary methods and choral techniques and materials.

 Priddy has earned numerous artistic distinctions.  Most recently, he has been asked to serve as artistic director for the International Presbyterian Choral Festival in Scotland in 2008, and his church’s chamber choir has been invited to sing at the 2008 Southern Regional ACDA convention, where they will premier a new work Te Deum laudamus by Michael E. Young. 

 In 2006 he was selected one of six North American conductors to guest conduct the Vancouver Chamber Choir in a program of music featuring works of North American composers at the National Conductors’ Symposium, held in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2004 he debuted at Carnegie Hall, where he conducted Handel’s Zadok the Priest and Schubert’s Mass in G.

 Priddy made his professional conducting debut in 1996 in a performance of the Brahms Requiem.  The prior year, he was one of eight graduate conductors invited to the National ACDA conducting competition, and he was a winner in the Arizona State University’s Conductors Orchestra competition.

Priddy has been an active church musician since 1978, serving congregations in Georgia, Washington, Arizona, New York and Kentucky, where he developed comprehensive music ministry programs and provided primary leadership in ministry and education.  He has presented more than 100 workshops and seminars in choral music, music drama and the singing actor, vocal pedagogy, handbell ringing, and the art of choral conduction.  In addition, he has conducted various youth music ensembles.   As an ordained minister in the Southern Baptist denomination, he has served as a music consultant to the Georgia and New York State Baptist conventions, leading instrumental, choral and worship conferences.