A native of California and a new resident of Berlin, Germany, Bill Prinzing Briggs is a versatile and cosmopolitan conductor, as comfortable directing jazz in Europe as he is conducting classics in New York. He has conducted orchestras in a dozen countries in Europe, North America, and Australia, and on the East Coast, the West Coast, in the Midwest and the South in the U.S. He has led professional, community, collegiate and youth orchestras in classical, family, educational, pops, and touring concerts. And he has enjoyed collaborations with opera, ballet, choral, jazz, and musical- and straight-theater ensembles as well as visual artists. 

Professional orchestras he has conducted include the Richmond Symphony, the Ohio Valley Symphony, the Granada Orchestra of Santa Barbara, the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Los Alamitos Pops Orchestra. 

He has worked with collegiate orchestras at the University of Southern California Colburn School of Music, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Mannes College of Music in New York City, the San Francisco Conservatory, California State University at Fullerton, University of California at Irvine, University of Kentucky, and Bakersfield College. 

The youth orchestras he has conducted include the Syracuse Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Irvine Youth Symphonies, the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Louisville Youth Orchestra, the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, and numerous camp and honor orchestras. 

He has conducted performances with the community orchestras of Long Beach, Lakewood, and Chico in California, and of Lexington and London in Kentucky. And he has collaborated with ballet companies in California, Ohio and Kentucky and opera companies in New York, Ohio and Kentucky. 

Briggs serves not only as a performer of music but an ambassador as well. He enjoys sharing musical concepts with audiences, whether children or adults, helping to deepen and enrich their musical experiences. He has presented pre-concert lectures, for example, for Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Nikkanen-Perlman-Bailey Trio in addition to subscription concerts for various symphony orchestras. His discussion topics have ranged from “Women in Music” to helping Latino students learn musical terms by connecting with Spanish in “Forte! Piano!”, to “Listening to Contemporary Music” using Bach’s music as a model, to unmasking how musical ensembles communicate nonverbally in “How They Do It!”. 

Briggs studied both cello and conducting at conservatories in Los Angeles, Cincinnati and New York, learning from master musicians and master teachers. He has participated in conducting masterclasses taught by JoAnn Falletta, Peter Oundjian, David Effron, Daniel Lewis, Larry Rachleff, Gerhard Samuel and Jorge Mester. And he has played in orchestras conducted by Kurt Masur, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin and many others. As a chamber musician he has participated in coachings and mastersclasses led by Milton Thomas, Julius Levine, Louis Moyse, Felix Galimir, Lee Fiser, and the Orion String Quartet, among others. 

He currently makes his living as a freelance conductor, chamber musician and teacher, performing frequently in both Europe and the U.S.