Saint Thomas Choir School

History

St. Thomas Choir School was founded in 1919 by the vestry of St. Thomas Church at the urging of T. Tertius Noble, an English born organist and composer, who had served as the organist of Saint Thomas Church since 1913. The school officially opened on March 3, 1919 at its first location, a four-story building at 123 West 55th Street.

In 1985, the church sold the West 55th Street school to Fisher Brothers, property developers, who in turn agreed to build a new choir school to be designed by the architecture firm Buttrick White & Burtis. The new location was a 75 foot (23 m) wide lot on West 58th Street, site of the Elysee Theater, a television studio for ABC Entertainment since 1955, to be demolished to make way for the new school building. (Prior to its use as a broadcast studio, the Elysee had been a theatre or a cinema since 1926, under various names that included the Golden Theatre, Cort's 58th Street Theatre, the Filmarte, the Fine Arts, and the Concert Theatre.) The $18 million 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m²) school building was clad with red brick on a granite base, with a central two-story window trimmed in Indiana limestone. It rose six stories "before stepping back in a tower with a gabled roof that houses the chapel." The new school opened its doors in September 1987, with twenty-six enrolled students, paying tuition of $4,800/year each, with a majority of the students attending on scholarship.

Student life

Students simultaneously participate in both a rigorous liturgical music program at Saint Thomas Church and a full range of academic subjects including English, science, history, mathematics, Latin, French, music theory, and theology. The school also engages in an athletic program, competing against local private schools in soccer, basketball, and track.

Students are admitted on a rolling basis. The school schedules auditions three times a year for boys entering the third, fourth, and fifth grade. Third grade students must live within a proximity to New York that permits them to return home each weekend and return on Sunday evening; this restriction is eliminated for fourth and fifth graders.

The Choir School offers a challenging pre-preparatory curriculum, interscholastic sports, and musical training for boys in grades three through eight. The Choir School is committed to training and educating talented musicians without regard to religious, economic or social background. Choristers are sought from all regions of the country.

Tuition for the 2015 school year is $15,000, with over 85% of the student's families receiving financial aid.

The Choir

The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is considered by many to be the leading ensemble in the Anglican choral tradition in the United States. Currently directed (2017) by Daniel Hyde, the choir performs regularly with the period instrument ensemble, Concert Royal, and also with the Orchestra of St. Luke's as part of its own concert series. The choir's primary raison d'être, however, is to provide music for five choral services each week at St. Thomas Church. Whereas the Men of the Saint Thomas Choir are professional singers, the boy choristers attend Saint Thomas Choir School, the only church related boarding choir school in the United States, and one of only a few choir schools remaining in the world.

In addition to annual performances of Handel’s Messiah, concerts at Saint Thomas Church have included Requiems by Fauré, Brahms, Mozart, Duruflé and Howells; Bach’s Passions and Mass in B Minor; the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610; a Henry Purcell anniversary concert; Rachmaninoff Vespers; the U.S. premiere of John Tavener’s Mass; a concert of American composers featuring works by Bernstein and Copland and a composition by Saint Thomas chorister, Daniel Castellanos; the world premiere of Scott Eyerly’s Spires and a concert of music by Benjamin Britten.

Supplementing its choral services and concert series over the past three decades, the choir has toured throughout the U.S. and Europe, including performances at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Kings College, Cambridge, Windsor, Edinburgh, St. Albans and the Aldeburgh Festival. In 2004, the choir toured Italy, and performed for a Papal Mass at the Vatican. During 2007, the choir performed Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion for the opening concert of the Mexico Festival in Mexico City as well as at Saint Thomas Church. 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 Bachfest Leipzig, a highlight of their June 2012 tour to Germany and Copenhagen. Live webcasts of all choral services and further information, including recordings of the choir, can be found at www.SaintThomasChurch.org

Head Staff

Notable alumni