Concerts at Saint Thomas presents a pair of October 2017 performances

New York, NY – Concerts at Saint Thomas will open its 2017-18 season with a pair of October performances at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue at West 53rd Street. The opening concert, Saturday, October 21 at 1:15pm, will feature award-winning carrillonneur Julie Zhu playing a carillon prelude on the twenty-six church bells that ring out over Fifth Avenue, followed immediately by Organist and Director of Music Daniel Hyde playing a program of North German and Dutch music by the precursors to J.S. Bach: Sweelinck, Scheidt, Buxtehude, Böhm, and Bruhns. The concert is part of the sixth bi-annual New York Early Music Celebration.

On Thursday, October 26 at 7:30pm, Daniel Hyde conducts The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and soloists Krista Bennion Feeney, Sara Cutler, Clara Rottsolk, and Adrian Timpau in Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, John Rutter’s Visions, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, and Vaughan Williams’s great plea for peace, Dona Nobis Pacem.

Arvo Pärt’s achingly simple Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten sets the scene for the English pastoral radiance of John Rutter’s Visions – a recent work for solo violin, boys voices, and strings. Rutter’s utopian ideal of heavenly peace will give way to Vaughan Williams’s folksy Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, before concluding with his 1936 cantata Dona Nobis Pacem, a plea for peace inspired by recent wars during the growing fears of a new one.

 

LISTING INFORMATION

OCTOBER 21, 2017 | SATURDAY at 1:15 pm
Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue at West 53rd Street

KEYBOARD MUSIC FROM HOLLAND AND FLANDERS: J.S. BACH, SWEELINCK, SCHEIDT, BUXTEHUDE, BÖHM, AND BRUHNS

1:15 pm | Julie Zhu, bells

2pm | Daniel Hyde, Loening-Hancock organ
NO TICKETS REQUIRED, DONATION SUGGESTED

 

OCTOBER 26, 2017 | THURSDAY at 7:30 pm
Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue at West 53rd Street

PÄRT: Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten 
RUTTER: Visions
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Dona Nobis Pacem

The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, with Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Krista Bennion Feeney, violin
Sara Cutler, harp
Clara Rottsolk, soprano
Adrian Timpau, baritone
Daniel Hyde, conductor
TICKETS REQUIRED

TICKET INFORMATION

All concerts take place at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue at West 53rd Street.

Tickets may be purchased at www.SaintThomasChurch.org/music/concerts, by calling the Concerts Office at (212) 664-9360, by email at [email protected] or in person at the Concerts Office at One West 53rd Street at Fifth Avenue (enter through the Parish House).
 

ABOUT JULIE ZHU

Julie Zhu, the carillonneur at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, recently took first prize in the 2015 Zwolle Carillon Competition Contest for a piece entitled Circle in Square. After graduating from Yale University with degrees in mathematics and art, Julie studied carillon performance and composition at the Royal Carillon School ‘Jef Denyn’ in Belgium. Her thesis project was a year-long art installation of scroll / scores and animation at the top of St. Rombouts tower in Mechelen, Belgium. Julie then played at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel carillon at the University of Chicago while she was an economic consultant in Chicago. She is now pursuing her MFA in visual art at Hunter College and teaches painting / drawing / design in Sitka, Alaska during the summer. As a touring carillonneur, Julie has performed throughout Europe and America and spent some months at Bok Tower, Florida, on a fellowship studying under renowned carillonneur and composer Geert D’hollander.
 

ABOUT DANIEL HYDE

Born in the UK, Daniel Hyde began his education as a chorister at Durham Cathedral and later continued his studies at Oakham School.  While at school he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists at the age of 17, and won the organ scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge.  During his time at Cambridge University, he served under Dr. Stephen Cleobury, performed worldwide with the renowned King’s College Choir and studied the organ with Dame Gillian Weir and Nicolas Kynaston.  Upon graduation with First Class Honours in Music, he was appointed as Director of Music at Jesus College, Cambridge, serving five very happy years developing the College’s music program consisting of a choir of men and boys and a mixed-voiced choir. From 2009 until 2016, he held the post of Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was also an Associate Professor in the University’s Faculty of Music.  In September 2016 he took up the post of Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York.

Alongside his roles in Oxford and Cambridge, Daniel is in increasing demand as a choral and orchestral conductor, and has worked with the London Bach Choir, the Britten Sinfonia, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the City of London Sinfonia.  Daniel’s broad-ranging discography can be found on the Opus Arte, Linn, Naxos and EMI labels.

As an organist, Daniel has performed across the UK and the world. Recital engagements have taken him to the USA, Vienna, Finland, Germany, Holland and also Australia, where he has performed at all the major venues including the Sydney Opera House and Adelaide Town Hall. He has been a concerto soloist with the BBC Philharmonic, and with the Britten Sinfonia he has performed the Poulenc Concerto a number of times, and has recorded the Hindemith Concerto to great critical acclaim.  He was awarded Second Prize and the Audience Prize in the Royal College of Organists Performer of the Year 2002 competition.  A regular accompanist to the BBC Singers on Radio Three, he has appeared at the BBC Proms on numerous occasions, and he made his solo debut there in 2010, performing Bach’s Canonic Variations at the organ of the Royal Albert Hall.  In the 2014/15 season, he performed the complete organ works of J S Bach on the new Dobson organ in Merton College, Oxford.  As an ensemble player he has appeared with Phantasm, the Britten Sinfonia, Aurora Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields amongst others.

www.danielhyde.co.uk
 

ABOUT THE SAINT THOMAS CHOIR OF MEN AND BOYS

The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is considered by many to be the leading ensemble of its kind in the Anglican choral tradition in the United States. The Choir performs regularly with Orchestra of St. Luke’s as part of its own concert series. Its primary raison d’être is to provide music for five choral services each week. Live webcasts of all choral services and further information concerning recordings, tours and concerts given by the Choir may be found at www.SaintThomasChurch.org

Alongside its choral services and concert series spanning the past four decades, the Choir has toured throughout the U.S. and Europe 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 February 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. Later in 2012, the Choir was invited to perform in the Thomaskirche at the Leipzig BachFest, a highlight of their June 2012 tour to Germany and Copenhagen. Domestically, the Choir most recently toured the Southeastern United States and was a featured performer at the National AGO Convention in Houston, Texas.

In addition to 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 two 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; a program of Handel and Purcell’s baroque masters conducted by John Scott and Richard Egarr along with Juilliard 415 and MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, conducted by David Hill. 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 September 2016, a special concert in memorial of John Scott was performed with Orchestra of St. Luke’s under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle.

The Gentlemen of the Saint Thomas Choir are professional singers; the Boy Choristers attend the Saint Thomas Choir School. The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. (www.concertorganists.com) and records exclusively for Resonus Classics (www.resonusclassics.com)
 

ABOUT THE SAINT THOMAS CHOIR SCHOOL

Founded in 1919, the Saint Thomas Choir School is the only boarding school solely for choristers in the United States, and one of only three schools of its type remaining in the world today. The Choir School offers a challenging pre-preparatory curriculum, interscholastic sports and musical training for boys in grades three through eight. Following graduation, boys move on to highly competitive independent boarding and day schools across the country.

The Saint Thomas Choir School is committed to training and educating talented musicians without regard to religious, economic, or social background. Generous financial aid is available to all successful applicants. Inquiries from interested families are sought throughout the year.

Do you know a boy who loves to sing? We want to hear from you at [email protected]. To learn more about the exceptional opportunity provided by a Choir School education, consult our website:  www.choirschool.org.
 

ABOUT ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S

Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) is one of America’s most versatile and distinguished orchestras, collaborating with the world’s greatest artists and performing approximately 80 concerts each year—including its Carnegie Hall Orchestra Series, Caramoor Summer Season, and new Resonance Chamber Music Festival debuting in June 2017. In its 42-year history, OSL has commissioned more than 50 new works, has given more than 175 world, U.S., and New York City premieres; and has appeared on more than 100 recordings, including four Grammy Award winners and seven releases on its own label, St. Luke’s Collection. Pablo Heras-Casado is OSL’s principal conductor and the orchestra’s fourth titled conductor; previous music directors and principal conductors are Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Charles Mackerras, and Donald Runnicles.

OSL grew out of a chamber ensemble that began giving concerts at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village in 1974. Today, the 21 virtuoso musicians of St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble make up OSL’s artistic core.

OSL owns and operates The DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Midtown Manhattan, sharing a building with the Baryshnikov Arts Center. The DiMenna Center is New York City’s premier venue for classical music rehearsal, recording, and learning, renowned for its superb acoustics, beautiful state-of-the-art facilities, and affordability. Since opening in 2011, The DiMenna Center has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors, including more than 400 ensembles and artists such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Valery Gergiev, James Levine, James Taylor, and Sting. OSL hosts hundreds of neighbors, families, and schoolchildren at its home each year for free community events.

Through its Education & Community programs, OSL has introduced audiences across New York City to live classical music. OSL brings free chamber concerts to the five boroughs; offers free interactive music programs at The DiMenna Center; provides chamber music coaching for adult amateurs; and engages 10,000 public school students each year through its Free School Concerts. In 2013, OSL launched Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s (YOSL), an intensive in- and after-school instrumental instruction program emphasizing musical excellence and social development, in partnership with community organizations and public schools in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

For more information, visit OSLmusic.org.