The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys

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 the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New York Baroque Incorporated and Modus Operandi Orchestra as part of Saint Thomas Church concert series. Live webcasts of choral services and further information concerning recordings, tours and concerts given by the choir can be found at www.SaintThomasChurch.org.

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 traveled to Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee on a tour celebrating the bicentennial of Saint Thomas Church.

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. In recent years, the Choir has premiered major works by Trevor Weston and Francis Pott, collaborated with the Choir of New College Oxford and the UK chamber choir Vasari Singers, and programmed concerts focusing on the works of Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, Britten, Peter Hallock, and Gerre Hancock.

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, on their album Byrd: Sacred Works. Recorded in tandem with the Byrd, an album of music for Christmas and Epiphany entitled No Small Wonder was released in 2023. Most recently, the Choir released The Music of Calvin Hampton (1938-1984), featuring choral and organ works of the titular composer, an important voice of the New York sacred and new music scenes during the 1960s and 70s.

The Gentlemen of the Saint Thomas Choir are all professional singers, and the Boy Choristers all attend the Saint Thomas Choir School, instituted in 1919, nowadays the only remaining educational establishment of its type in the US. The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.