Trinity Announces July Webcasts In Free 'Comfort At One' Series

Trinity Church Wall Street has played a prominent part in New York history for the past three centuries, notably providing a safe haven for the city's downtown community in the wake of 9/11. Even since the suspension of in-person activities entailed by the pandemic this spring, Trinity has managed to bring solace to the world at large, drawing on its high-quality recording and film technology to launch a new, free, concert streaming series titled "Comfort at One."

Now the inclusive parish announces a full month of programming in the series. Throughout July, Mondays and Thursdays will be devoted to revisiting favorite "Bach + One" choral concerts and "Pipes at One" organ recitals respectively, all professionally filmed in HD, while Tuesdays and Wednesdays will offer a mix of archived excerpts and new at-home performances from Trinity's extended artistic family. Streaming at 1pm on Facebook and Twitter, with full videos posted here, "Comfort at One" continues to deliver the spiritual renewal, cultural enrichment and "indispensable and unmissable" music (New York Times) for which Trinity is rightly known.

Marking a successful shift online, Trinity's community ensembles and music education and outreach programs remain engaged through distance learning, all meeting remotely each week and continuing to rehearse new music together. Trinity Youth Chorus, Downtown Voices, St. Paul's Chapel Choir and Trinity's outreach schools have all created virtual choir recordings, which are featured in the upcoming Comfort at One schedule as well as in Trinity Church Wall Street's online family services, titled Family Worship: Home Edition.

The series' July offerings include six new at-home performances, highlighted by bass-baritone Jonathan Woody, who virtually joins members of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street for music by the great Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez (July 15); Trinity Baroque Orchestra principal oboist Gonzalo Ruiz, who appears with his ensemble House of Time (July 28); and by Music Director Julian Wachner, who improvises on hymns chosen by the Trinity audience (July 21) and on In Christ There Is No East or West for Trinity's Pride Sunday (July 7). There will also be encore opportunities to see Wachner lead the full choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra in sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach (July 6, 13 & 20) and to watch Dr. David Hurd, Avi Stein, Janet Yieh, Wachner and other organists in recital (July 9, 16, 23 & 30).

Past "Comfort at One" highlights include two at-home performances by members of Trinity's in-house contemporary orchestra, NOVUS NY. Cellist Andrew Yee, who is also a member of the renowned Attacca Quartet, played Clemens non Papa's Ego Flos Campi, and principal percussionists Jonny Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum and Terry Sweeney, collectively known as Brooklyn's "virtuosic and utterly mesmerizing" Sandbox Percussion (The Guardian), reimagined Jason Treuting's Extremes on whichever makeshift instruments they could find at home.

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