Jeanne C. Frolick, SFCC

Bio

†Christian Community Sister Jeanne C. Frolick (1927–2020) taught and directed choirs in Oregon and Washington for nearly 50 years. Of special note are her awards for excellence in teaching and scholarship from Burlington Northern Foundation and her promotion to professor emeritus by Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, where she currently resides.

Sister Jeanne is the author of Rise Up and Read Music: Techniques of Sight-Singing.

Sr. Jeanne was OCP’s first music editor. She was hired in the early 1970s by Fr. Edmund Bliven, the Editor of Liturgical Publications at the time, to choose music for Today’s Missal. She put Today’s Missal on track musically by providing parishes with traditional hymns that were solid and transformative, as well as contemporary music that was well-crafted, theologically sound, accessible to the assembly and in true service of the liturgy. These values, which she introduced almost 50 years ago, remain at the core of OCP’s music program to this very day.

Sr. Jeanne was a superb choral conductor. As a friend and protégé of the great Paul Salamunovich, she was always the go-to person for organizing and leading the music for big archdiocesan celebrations. For anyone familiar with Leonard Bernstein’s conducting style, that was Sr. Jeanne. She enthused and danced and swayed with every fiber of her being, bringing the music to life and bringing out the best in every person in the choir. And all the time with a smile big enough to light up a city. She was choral music.

When off the podium, she was one of the kindest, most endearing and most entertaining people you’d ever want to meet. She possessed a real joy for life, along with a real commitment to serving others. All of us who knew her, worked with her, were taught by her, were inspired by her — well, we will miss her greatly. She was one of a kind, and the world will be poorer without her. –Owen Alstott