The Saint Thomas Choir Of Men And Boys Presents MESSIAH, 12/6 And 12/8

The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys presents Handel's Messiah on Tuesday, December 6 and Thursday, December 8 at 7:30 P.M.at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, One West 53rd Street New York, NY. Daniel Hyde conducts Concert Royal with soloists Maria Valdes, soprano; Avery Amereau, mezzo-soprano; Miles Mykkanen, tenor and Thomas Meglioranza, bass.

"For many New Yorkers of a classical bent, the holiday season officially begins with the two performances of Handel's Messiah at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue." James R. Oestreich, The New York Times

No work of sacred choral music has won the hearts of audiences and performers like Handel's Messiah. Since its 1742 premiere, Messiah has been a centerpiece of Christmas and Easter celebrations around the world. At Saint Thomas, it is a much-loved Christmas tradition. The New Yorker notes that "The Saint Thomas Choir offers a Messiah of impeccable musicality and taste."

In her review, New York Times music critic Vivien Schweitzer writes: "The annual Saint Thomas version (of Messiah) is a king among the innumerable performances in New York, admired for the pure sound of the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys and the spirited playing of Concert Royal, a period-instrument ensemble.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

MARIA VALDES, SOPRANO

For the 2016/17 season, Maria Valdes will appear with the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Chattanooga Symphony, performing Mahler's Symphony No. 4, and Mozart's Exultate Jubilate; with the Saint Thomas Church on 5th Avenue in New York City, as well as Handel's Messiah, a recital at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Atlanta.

Past performances include Haydn's Creation and Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor with the Bellingham Festival of Music in Bellingham, Washington, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the Emory University Symphony Orchestra, the title role in Donizetti's Rita, conducted by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, Mozart's Requiem with the Atlanta Master Chorale, Britten's Les Illuminations with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 as a winner of the Brumby Concerto Competition at Georgia State University.

An avid recitalist, Ms. Valdes has appeared in concert with Martin Katz, as well as world-renowned flamenco guitarist Pepe Romero. Other roles and covers as an Adler Fellow include Johanna in Sweeney Todd, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera and Magnolia in Showboat. As a member of that company's Merola Program, she performed the role of Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

AVERY AMEREAU, MEZZO-SOPRANO

Mezzo-soprano Avery Amereau has garnered much attention for the unique quality of her voice and sensitivity to interpretation.

Highlights of the 2016-17 sesason include her Metropolitan Opera debut as the madrigal singer in Manon Lescaut, the title role of Carmen with Opera Columbus, and a return to Glyndebourne Festival Opera for her debut with the Festival. On the concert stage, she will sing Handel's Messiah with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and appear with Santa Fe Pro Musica in a program of early music arias.

A native of Jupiter, Florida, Ms. Amereau received her Bachelor of Music degree at Mannes College, and her Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School studying under Edith Wiens. She studied at the Internationale Meistersinger Akademie, under the tutelage of Malcolm Martineau, Ann Murray, and John Fisher, among others. She is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies at Juilliard, where she is a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship.

MILES MYKKANEN, TENOR

Miles Mykkanen has garnered recognition on the world's concert and operatic stages for his "focused, full-voiced tenor" (New York Times).

His current season includes Bernstein's Candide with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail with Opera Columbus. Beyond this present concert, New York City appearances include recitals with Steven Blier and the New York Festival of Song and various appearances at Juilliard.

Miles Mykkanen celebrated his Carnegie Hall recital debut last year, and has performed with the New World Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Juilliard415, and at the Franz Schubert Institut, Royal Irish Academy of Music, and Interlochen Academy.

Thomas Meglioranza, BASS
Thomas Meglioranza, winner of the Naumburg and Concert Artists Guild competitions, has sung oratorio with many major orchestras and Eight Songs for a Mad King with the LA Philharmonic, Bach with Les Violons du Roy, Copland's Old American Songs with the National Symphony. Operatic roles include Pierrot in Die tote Stadt, Chou En-Lai in Nixon in China, and Prior Walter in Eötvös' Angels in America. With pianist Reiko Uchida, he has given recitals all over the world and recorded Winterreise, assorted Schubert lieder, and Fauré songs to wide acclaim, as well as Bach cantatas with the Taverner Consort and Virgil Thomson's orchestral songs with BMOP.

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, or with the period instrument ensemble, Concert Royal, as part of its own concert series. Its primary raison d'être, however, is to provide music for five choral services each week. Live webcasts of all choral services and further information including recordings of the choir may be found at www.SaintThomasChurch.org

Supplementing its choral services and concert series over 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; Bach's Passions, Mass in B Minor and Motets; 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.

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)

CONCERT ROYAL

Founded by Artistic Director James Richman, Concert Royal, performs the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries exclusively on original instruments, presenting a multifaceted approach to the period by programming all genres of music from orchestral, vocal, and chamber music to opera and opera-ballet. The ensemble has been in the forefront of the Baroque and Classic revival in the United States, with innovative performances of the major repertoire of the period featuring the foremost performer/scholars in the field. This work has included the first ongoing program of Baroque opera on original instruments with period costumes and staging, as well as premieres from the chamber music and chamber orchestra repertoire. The ensemble has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival, and Spoleto Festival USA, Bermuda Festival, and the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, among others, and tours regularly with the New York Baroque Dance Company. Together they have appeared across the United States and abroad in Canada, England, France, Germany and Mexico.

James RichMAN
Artistic Director and founder of Concert Royal, James Richman, is a prominent harpsichordist and fortepianist, and a leading conductor of Baroque music and opera. He was winner of the Bodky Competition of the Cambridge Society of Early Music, and in addition was a laureate of the Bruges Competition and a prize winner in the Paris Harpsichord Competition of the Festival Estival and the First International Fortepiano Competition (Paris). In appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Spoleto Festival USA, the E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, as well as in regular series in New York, he has presented staged and concert performances of such important works as Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Fe?tes d'He?be?, Pygmalion, Les Indes Galantes, and Le Temple de la Gloire; Handel's Ariodante, Acis and Galatea, Alessandro, Il Pastor Fido and Terpsicore, Glu?ck's Orfeo, Purcell's King Arthur and Dido and Aeneas, Monteverdi's Incoronazione di Poppea, J.C. Bach's Amadis des Gaulles, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Le Devin du Village. He is also Artistic Director and conductor of the Dallas Bach Society and Music Director of the New York Baroque Dance Company, and recently led the Hanover Band at the Pollenc?a Festival in Majorca. In 1996 he was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to the art of music.

DANIEL HYDE, ORGANIST AND DIRECTOR OF MUSIC
Born in the UK, Daniel Hyde began his education as a chorister at Durham Cathedral. Whilst 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, performing world-wide with the renowned King's College Choir; he 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 programme, and training of a choir of men and boys and a mixed-voiced choir. In 2009, he took up the post of Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was also an Associate Professor in Oxford University's Faculty of Music. This September he moved to New York to take up the post of Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue.

Alongside his roles in Oxford and Cambridge, Daniel has been in increasing demand as a choral and orchestral conductor, and has worked with the BBC Singers, 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. Magdalen College Choir recorded exclusively with Opus Arte, the label of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and 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 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 BBC 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.