Richard Tanner is an organist and choral director who has specialised in the training of boy and girl chorister voices for over thirty years.
He is The Nancy B. and John B. Hoffmann Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York City, where he leads the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, which is the leading ensemble of its kind in the United States.
As music director, organist and producer, Richard has made over fifty recordings and has worked extensively for the BBC. For twenty years he was a regular musical director and organist for BBC Radio 4’s Daily Service, and he has also directed and played for several high-profile broadcasts from London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Orchestras that he has conducted include the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the period instrument ensemble, Canzona, and The Bliss Sinfonia, which he founded. Recordings as a conductor, both with the Northern Chamber Orchestra, include Requiem and Organ Concerto by David Briggs and The Manchester Carols by Carol Ann Duffy and Sasha Johnson Manning. His organ recordings are available on Spotify, including Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur. He has given masterclasses in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and has directed choral courses in Sweden and for RSCM America.
Richard was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral, student at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and organ scholar at Exeter College Oxford, where he read for a degree in Music at Oxford University. He has held posts at St Albans Cathedral, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Royal Naval College Chapel Greenwich, All Saints’ Northampton and Blackburn Cathedral, where he was Director of Music for 13 years.
Immediately prior to his appointment in New York, Richard Tanner was Director of Music at Rugby School, one of the oldest and most prestigious co-educational boarding schools in Britain. There he was responsible for a large team of professional musicians and students with broad specialisms and musical interests. Under his leadership, the choir performed at Carnegie Hall in 2017 and at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Rugby World Cup at Twickenham stadium. The choir regularly appeared on BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong, and its singers won the BBC Young Chorister of the Year competition in 2017 and 2022. In 2021, Richard founded the Rugby Choristers at Bilton Grange, the UK’s newest choral foundation in the Anglican choral tradition, with separate choirs of boy and girl choristers singing six Choral Evensongs each week during term time alongside professional adult singers.
A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists since 1997, Richard was elected to its Trustee Council in 2025 and, in the same year, became a Trustee of the Rodolfus Choral Foundation. He is married to the soprano, Philippa Hyde (www.philippahydesoprano.com).
