First Parish music director is a multidisciplinary artist

Miranda Loud

In the choir loft at the First Parish in Lincoln, music director Miranda Loud moves between roles, sitting to play the organ and then standing to conduct the choir — but doing more than one thing at a time is nothing new to this interdisciplinary musician, artist, photographer, and educator.

As one would expect, Holy Week is an especially busy time, when music at the church will range “from meditative and introspective to celebratory and full of trumpet fanfare,” Loud said. The Good Friday service at 7 p.m. will be predominantly music and poetry; the choir will sing Puccini’s Requiem, and soprano Ann Moss — another Lincoln native from a musical family — will sing several pieces.

Loud became the church’s music director in December 2022 after serving as acting director for almost a year. She’s been working to develop a sense of camaraderie as well as strong performances from the choir, which has quadrupled in size from seven to 28 members during her tenure.

“The most fun part of the job is working with the choir and feeling part of a community again. As a freelance organist for about seven years and doing visual art and photography, I’ve missed a sense of community and seeing the same people and building relationships with them,” she said.

Loud has filled in as a sub occasionally at First Parish over the years but has also held worked as a music director and organist for over 30 years in various churches, including two in New York City — St. James’ Episcopal Church Madison Avenue and the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola Park Avenue — and then in the Boston area at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Weston, where she founded and developed a large and diverse concert series.

Coming back to the First Parish is like coming home for Loud. She grew up in Lincoln, and her father Rob Loud and grandmother Mary Loud both worked in the church’s music program in the 1960s. After earning music degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, she focused on becoming a professional singer in her 30s and has been singing alto with the Handel & Haydn Chorus since 2011.

Working at the First Parish in Lincoln “gives me much more leeway in terms of what kind of music I can do,” she said. In recent services, she’s played jazz by John Coltrane and George Shearing and conducted the choir in a Renaissance piece, a Civil Rights Movement marching song, and songs from Cameroon with drums. The wide range of music reflects the religious and social diversity of the congregation, which includes Jews, evangelicals, Quakers, agnostics, and everything in between.

“I’m excited to be learning new repertoire by living composers, women composers, and composers of color,” she said. “It’s so important to try to bring in excellent music-making from different perspectives.”

Loud’s own artistic perspectives have been just as varied. In the 2000 and 2010s, she created multimedia concerts and films for NatureStage, a group she founded that uses the emotional power of art and film to explore human relationships with other species and inspire action to become global stewards. More recently, she’s immersed herself in the visual arts as a professional photographer and self-taught watercolor painter and designer, learning techniques from YouTube videos and refining them in her home studio. Trying something new is a recurring theme for her.

“We all have hidden talents,” Loud said. “I think a lot of people in midlife have urges to do something different but think they can’t start as a beginner in their 40s or later… I always loved visual art but was a musician and never had time to do that. It didn’t even occur to me that I would have this whole other iteration as a painter — it just kind of snuck up on me.” She’s earned part of her living from selling her photographs, paintings, and gifts with her designs through websites she built (mirandaloudphotography.com and mirandaloudartist.com) as well as teaching sketchbook workshops.

“It’s wonderful to have the [part-time] First Parish job because it takes the pressure off to always wonder ‘Will someone buy this?’ But right now my focus is on the church and getting in a rhythm with the music and the new ministers and not spreading myself too thin,” she said. Nonetheless, despite (or perhaps because of) her varied pursuits, “I feel much more comfortable in my own skin. I’m doing the best I can and constantly trying to learn.”