Frances Caldwell
Frances Elizabeth Sherer Caldwell, 78, of White Plains, N.Y., died on November 25, 2020, in Ramsey, N.J., at the home of her daughter, Juliet. Born on August 30, 1942, in Mount Kisco, N.Y., to Mary Brown Sherer and Clark Grosjean Sherer, Frances grew up in Scarsdale hearing her mother play piano and her father sing along with the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts every Saturday. As she once wrote of her early days learning the piano, “I was galvanized by Bach and Beethoven, and practiced so much my parents would leave the house!”
After earning her BA in music from Smith College (’64, Phi Beta Kappa), where she studied piano with Robert Miller and composition with Alvin Etler, Frances stayed on at Smith for one year as a faculty fellow in music, then entered the master’s program at UC Berkeley. She married Peter Devigne Caldwell in September 1966 and moved to Paris, France, where Peter was practicing law. There Frances completed her graduate studies under the guidance of pianist Nadine Vercambre, earning a