Saint Thomas Church Announces 2023-24 Season

Concerts at Saint Thomas today unveiled their 2023-24 season, with performances celebrating the church's bicentennial year, featuring its premier ensemble, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. All concerts will be available via livestream and on-demand for a limited time after each performance. Tickets and livestream information can be found at www.saintthomaschurch.org/music/concerts.

The new season begins on September 30 with pianist Asiya Korepanova's performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Etudes-Tableaux, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. Korepanova is currently performing the complete Rachmaninoff solo piano works within the anniversary year. 

Saint Thomas Church marks its own anniversary with Saint Thomas at 200: A Musical Legacy on October 13. This free concert is part of the church's bicentennial weekend festivities. Saint Thomas at 200 highlights past commissions for the choir from contemporary composers, along with works by former Saint Thomas Directors of Music, including: Te Deum in A by T. Tertius Noble (first director of music), A Song to the Lamb by Gerre Hancock (previous director of music), and  Missa Sancti Thomae (by current Director of Music, Jeremy Filsell). The performance also features works of Nico Muhly, John Scott, and former Saint Thomas Boy Chorister and current Gentlemen of the Choir Daniel Castellanos (b. 1995).

The season continues November 11 with American concert organist Renée Anne Louprette on the Miller-Scott Organ playing works including  J.S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E minor ("Wedge"), Jeanne Demessieux's Te Deum, César Franck's Choral No. 3 in A minor. This concert will be the first Grand Organ Series performance on the church's newly completed Karl and Barbara Saunders Organ Console, which will enable the audience to see our artists front and center in the nave of the church.

Two of the city's most notable Christmas traditions return with G.F. Handel's Messiah, performed by the Choir of Men and Boys and New York Baroque Incorporated on December 5 and 7, and the family-friendly Christmas on Fifth Avenue on December 14 for which the Juilliard Music Advancement Program Strings Ensemble joins the Boys of Saint Thomas Choir.

The concert series returns in the new year on January 27, 2024 with organists Jeremy Filsell, David Briggs and Wayne Marshall presenting a concert of works for organ and piano. The program will include music by J.S. Bach, Langlais, Gershwin, and a new bicentennial celebration commission for this occasion by David Briggs for two organs and piano.

Conductor Justin Bischof leads the Modus Operandi Orchestra and pianist Jeremy Filsell in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 on March 21. Soprano Laquita Mitchell joins the Choir of Men and Boys in the second half for Poulenc's Stabat Mater.

Organist Iain Quinn performs Tournemire's "The Seven Last Words of Christ” on March 25 and vocal ensemble ModernMedieval Voices presents music of, and inspired by, Hildegard von Bingen on March 26. These free performances offer meditative musical reflections for the beginning of Holy Week.

Internationally-acclaimed concert organist and recording artist Stephen Tharp plays his transcriptions of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra on April 20. Stephen Tharp's international career has earned him a reputation as one of the most traveled and highly-regarded concert organists of his generation.

The Choir of Men and Boys, along with the Modus Operandi Orchestra and Justin Bischof close the 2023-24 season on May 16 with a concert of the music of Peter Hallock, Richard Strauss, Randall Thompson and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The program includes Vaughan Williams' An Oxford Elegy, Strauss' Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings and Thompson's The Place of the Blest.