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PaviElle French, is an Emmy Award winning, interdisciplinary artist/educator, hailing from Rondo - a historically Black neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is known for her powerhouse vocals and performing with an equally powerful 6-piece band. She is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (21-23); a McKnight Artist Fellow (2020); and has received a, Sage Award for Dance and Choreography (2016). She was a First Year Global Artists Initiative, Artist in Residence, at MacPhail Center for The Arts (2021); an American Composers Forum Grant recipient for her classical composition, A Requiem for Zula (2018), written in celebration of her Mother's life. PaviElle's symphonies have been featured at both the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and New World Symphony in 2021, under the direction of Conductor Edwin Outwater, and Artistic Director, Michael Tilson Thomas. She has performed locally and nationally and has graced such stages as First Avenue; Ordway Center; and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Arts Across America Series).

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PaviElle was voted as Minneapolis City Pages "Best R&B Vocalist of 2015"; her band was named one of First Avenue's Best New Bands of (2015), and were a featured on both, TPT/PBS "Lowertown Line,'' (2017); and MN Original (2018). Growing up in a family steeped in music she says that she ‘wants to make music that honors and represents the Black Arts aesthetic.’ PaviElle honed her craft as a young Artist at: Penumbra Theatre (1999-); Steppingstone Theatre (1997-99); and with the collective EduPoetic Enterbrainment (2000-04). She is a Pillsbury House Naked Stages Grant Recipient (2014); was a part of the Ensemble Cast of Sharon Bridgforth’s dat Black Mermaid Man Lady – the show (2018)  She has been seen in multiple productions of Black Nativity, at Penumbra Theatre, most recently in 2022. She was also featured on Garrett McQueen’s popular podcast, Trilloquy, in 2021.
PaviElle has self-produced an album called, SOVEREIGN, in response to the racial upheaval, and pandemic, beginning in 2020. And she has produced a companion documentary called, I AM SOVEREIGN, filmed by Peter Myers, released in August 2022. She has also launched a Twin Cities Community-based Residency through the American Composers Forum, funded by the NEA, entitled: Liberation! Uplifting Our Youth.
She has been commissioned by The Schubert Club to write, The SOVEREIGN Suite, a continuation of her evolving SOVEREIGN Series, performed in May of 2022. And she was commissioned by the Sands Family, to create a symphony in honor of their 50th Anniversary. Sands Of Time, premiered by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, in June 2022. Presently, PaviElle, is in her second year of her ACF Residency, and Jerome Artist Fellowship. And she is working toward an all-ages set of curricula, and workshops, based on her work through her SOVEREIGN Series, and work on her 2022-23 ACF Residency.