Touring & Performing
The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is considered to be the leading ensemble of its kind in the Anglican choral tradition in the United States. While its primary raison d’être is to sing five choral services each week, the Choir also performs regularly with Orchestra of St. Luke’s and New York Baroque Incorporated as part of the Concerts at Saint Thomas series. Live webcasts of choral services and further information concerning recordings, tours and concerts by the Choir can be found by visiting the Saint Thomas Church website.
Over recent years, the Choir has toured throughout the U.S., Europe and Scandinavia with performances at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, King’s College, Cambridge, Windsor, Edinburgh, St. Albans, the Aldeburgh Festival and the Vatican. In 2012, the Boys of the Choir traveled to Dresden to give the premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Dresden Requiem with the Dresden Staatskapelle in the Frauenkirche and Semper Oper and the full choir performed later that year in the Thomaskirche at the Leipzig BachFest. Domestically, the Choir most recently toured Illinois and Wisconsin and participated in the Diocese of Chicago Treble Festival.
Besides the annual performances of Handel’s Messiah, concerts at Saint Thomas Church have included Requiems by Fauré, Brahms, Mozart, Duruflé, Victoria and Howells; J.S. Bach’s Passions, Mass in B Minor and Motets; the lesser-known St. John Passion of C.P.E. Bach; the U.S. premiere of John Tavener’s Mass; the U.S. premiere of Nico Muhly’s work My Days with viol consort Fretwork; Handel’s Israel in Egypt and James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross. In 2014, the Boy Choristers performed in Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion at the Park Avenue Armory as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival with the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Peter Sellars and conductor Sir Simon Rattle.
The boy choristers make frequent appearances on local and national television programs, such as the TODAY Show, and appearances on classical music radio stations. They sang with Sting at the tree lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center and, at Christmas 2019, they were invited to be the opening act of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
The choir has made many commercial recordings under successive Directors of Music, Gerre Hancock and John Scott, and most recently did so under the direction of Jeremy Filsell: The Music of Gerre Hancock, an album of music indelibly associated with Saint Thomas Church. In 2022, the choir marked the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd by recording the Byrd Propers for the feast of Corpus Christi, within the recreation of the pre-Reformation Sarum Rite Mass. This recording will be available in the Spring of 2023
While the Boy Choristers attend the Saint Thomas Choir School, the Gentlemen of the Choir are professional singers. The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc (www.concertorganists.com).
