Jeremy Filsell & The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York
Biography Jeremy Filsell & The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York
Jeremy Filsell
is one of only a few virtuoso performers as both pianist and organist. He has appeared as a solo pianist in Russia, Scandinavia, New Zealand and Australia and throughout the USA and UK. His concerto repertoire encompasses Bach, Mozart and Beethoven through to Shostakovich, John Ireland, Constant Lambert and the Rachmaninov cycle. He has recorded the solo piano J&R 99 (2)music of Herbert Howells, Bernard Stevens, Eugène Goossens and Johann Christoph Eschmann and recent releases include discs of Rachmaninov’s solo piano music (Signum), the first two Rachmaninov Concerti (Raven) and the piano music of Francis Pott (Acis).
Jeremy is on the international roster of Steinway Piano Artists and has recorded for BBC Radio 3, USA, and Scandinavian radio networks in solo and concerto roles. His discography comprises more than 35 solo recordings. Gramophone magazine commented on the series of 12 CDs comprising the premiere recordings of Marcel Dupré’s complete organ works for Guild in 2000 that it was one of the greatest achievements in organ recording. In 2005, Signum released a 3-disc set of the six organ symphonies of Louis Vierne, recorded on the 1890 Cavaillé-Coll organ in St. Ouen, Rouen. He has taught at universities, summer schools, and conventions in both the UK and USA and has served on international competition juries in England and Switzerland. Recent solo engagements have taken him across the USA and UK and to Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. In North America, he concertizes under the auspices of Philip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.
As a teenager, Jeremy Filsell was a Limpus, Shinn & Durrant prizewinner for FRCO and was awarded the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. As a student of Nicolas Kynaston and Daniel Roth, he studied as an Organ Scholar at Keble College, Oxford before completing graduate studies in piano performance with David Parkhouse and Hilary McNamara at the Royal College of Music in London. His PhD in Musicology from Birmingham City University/Conservatoire was awarded for research involving aesthetic and ATH 20interpretative issues in the music of Marcel Dupré. Before moving to the USA in 2008, he held Academic and Performance lectureships at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and was a lay clerk in the Queen’s choir at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. He combined an international recital and teaching career with being director of music at the Church of the Epiphany and then of St. Alban’s in Washington DC, Artist-in-residence at Washington National Cathedral, and Professor of Organ at the Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore), before moving to New York in April 2019 to become Organist & Director of Music at the Church of St. Thomas, 5th Avenue.
The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys
is considered to be the leading ensemble of its kind in the Anglican choral tradition in the United States. While its primary raison d’être is to sing five choral services each week, the choir also performs regularly with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New York Baroque Incorporated and Modus Operandi Orchestra as part of Saint Thomas Church concert series. Live webcasts of choral services and further information concerning recordings, tours and concerts given by the choir can be found at SaintThomasChurch.org.
Over recent years, the choir has toured throughout the US, Europe and Scandinavia with performances at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, King’s College, Cambridge, the Aldeburgh Festival, at the Vatican, and in Dresden and at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Domestically, the choir has appeared often at National AGO Conventions.
The boy choristers make frequent appearances on local and national television programs, such as the TODAY program, and the classical music radio station WQXR. They have sung with Sting at the tree lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center, performed at the new Steinway Piano Hall on 6th Avenue, and in 2019 they appeared as the opening act at the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular.
Besides annual performances of Handel’s Messiah, the choir’s concerts at Saint Thomas Church have included presentations of the Fauré, Duruflé and Mozart Requiems, the J. S. Bach Passions, the Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Israel in Egypt, and James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross. The choir has given the US premieres of works by John Tavener, Nico Muhly, and in recent times has commissioned new choral music by Trevor Weston, Julian Wachner and Francis Pott. In 2016, a concert in memory of former Director of Music John Scott was performed with Orchestra of St. Luke’s under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle.
The choir has made many commercial recordings under successive Directors of Music, Gerre Hancock and John Scott, and has recently done so under the direction of Jeremy Filsell. Besides The Music of Gerre Hancock, albums marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd (Propers for the feast of Corpus Christi, sung within the recreation of the pre-Reformation Sarum Rite Mass), and a recording of Anglo-American Christmas music (Acis) were released in 2023. New recordings of the choral music of Calvin Hampton and Kenneth Leighton are scheduled in 2025 (Signum).
The Gentlemen of the Saint Thomas Choir are all professional singers, and the Boy Choristers all attend the Saint Thomas Choir School, instituted in 1919, nowadays the only remaining educational establishment of its type in the US. The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.
