Kent Tritle: Conductor
Kent Tritle is one of America’s leading choral conductors. Called “the brightest star in New York’s choral music world” by The New York Times, he is in his third season as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; his seventh season as Music Director of Musica Sacra, the longest continuously performing professional chorus in New York; and his ninth season as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York, the acclaimed 200-voice volunteer chorus.
In addition, Kent is Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music and is a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School. He is the host of the weekly radio show “The Choral Mix with Kent Tritle,” a weekly hour-long radio program on New York’s Classical 105.9 WQXR and www.wqxr.org devoted to the vibrant genre of choral music and the breadth of activity in the choral community. An acclaimed organ virtuoso, he is also the organist of the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra.
Highlights of Kent Tritle’s 2013-14 season include leading three of J.S. Bach’s choral masterworks with three of his organizations: St. John Passion at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; St. Matthew Passion with the Oratorio Society of New York; and Mass in B Minor at the Manhattan School of Music. He also expands the presence of his choral concerts in the “Great Music in a Great Space” series at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine by staging concerts in a variety of locations within the space; he leads Musica Sacra in a program devoted to contemporary composers Jocelyn Hagen and Meredith Monk; and a recording that he has just completed of Juraj Filas’s Requiem “Oratio Spei” (whose New York premiere he recently led) with the Prague Symphony Orchestra was made not only to be released on disc but to be made available to radio stations internationally on September 11.
In addition this season, he has created high-profile collaborations for his groups with other major players in the New York music scene: he directs the Manhattan School of Music Symphonic Chorus for five performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert; Musica Sacra for the New York Philharmonic’s presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey film screening and live score performance, also led by Alan Gilbert; and the Oratorio Society of New York for Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by Sir Roger Norrington.
DISCOGRAPHY
Oratio Spei
Prague Symphony Orchestra
Kent Tritle, conductor
Oratio Spei (Prayer of Hope) is reminiscent of a traditional Latin Mass requiem for the deceased who ask for forgiveness, but with a consoling and optimistic twist.
2013
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oratiospei
Messages to Myself
New Music for Chorus A Cappella
MUSICA SACRA
KENT TRITLE, conductor
Daniel Brewbaker, Robert Convery, Michael Gilbertson, Aaron Jay Kernis, Elliot Z Levine, Zachary Patten, Behzad Ranjbaran, Christopher Theofanidis, Christina Whitten Thomas
Eileen Clark, soprano; Lianne Coble, soprano; Silvie Jensen, mezzo soprano; Amy Justman,soprano; Drew Martin, tenor; John Tiranno, tenor
2012
http://www.msrcd.com/catalog/cd/MS1411
Oratorio Society of New York: Coronation Mass
Oratorio Society of New York & Kent Tritle
Rachel Rosales, Malena Dayen, John Tirano, Joshua South & Orchestra of the Society
W.A. Mozart – Mass in C Major, K317
Anton Bruckner – Three a Capella Motets
2012
http://oratoriosocietyofny.org/coronation/
Cool of the Day: A Cappella Gems through the Centuries
Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, New York, NY
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle and Robert Reuter
Works by Parker, Bruckner, Nicolai, Casals, Lotti, da Palestrina, Whitacre, Strauss and more
2011
Kent Tritle Plays the Noack Tracker Organ at the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow
Works by Buxtehude, Walther, Sweelinck, J.S. Bach
2010
Available through: http://www.rctodc.org
Listen:
A Treasury of German Baroque Music
The Hanoverian Ensemble
John Solum, transverse flute
Richard Wyton, transverse flute and recorder
Nina Stern, recorder
Arthur Fiacco, cello
Kent Tritle, organ and harpsichord
Works by J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, Fasch, Lübeck, Pachelbel, Quantz, Telemann
2010, MSR Classics MS 1380
Listen:
Ginastera: The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Schnittke: Concerto for Choir
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director
2008, MSR Classics MS 1251
Listen to O Master of all living:
Wondrous Love
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director
A cappella works spanning 1,000 years of sacred music repertoire
Works by Perotin, Jacob Praetorius II, Gesualdo, Tallis, J.S. Bach, Phoebe P. Knapp, Calvin Hampton, Neil Farrell, John Kennedy, James MacMillan, Kevin Oldham, K. Scott Warren,
as well as Gregorian chant and traditional works
2006, MSR Classics MS 1144
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Komm, Jesu, komm:
Listen to Chorale (Oldham):
Duruflé: Requiem and Suite for Organ
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director
Kaaren Erickson, Soprano
Arthur Fiacco, Cello
Nancianne Parrella, Organ
2005, MSR Classics MS 1141
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Introit:
Rachmaninov: Vespers (All Night Vigil)
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director
2004, AMDG Recordings
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Priidite:
Silent Night: Music for Advent & Christmas
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director, and Organ
Chant, motets, and carols of the season, and organ music of Bach and Brahms
1998, AMDG Recordings AMDG003
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to O Magnum Mysterium:
O Vos Omnes: Music for Lent & Holy Week
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Music Director
Music by Allegri, Victoria, Palestrina, Tallis, and Byrd, and Gregorian chant
1998, AMDG Recordings AMDG002
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Miserere mei, Deus:
Jubilations! Music for Organ, Brass, and Percussion
Nancianne Parrella, Organ
St. Ignatius Brass
Kent Tritle, Conductor
Works by Louis Vierne, Petr Eben, Sir Arthur Bliss, Richard Struss, Louie White,
Charles-Marie Widor, Felix Alexandre Guilmant
2001, AMDG Recordings
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Marche Triomphale:
The Romantic Organ
Kent Tritle, Organ
Music by Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Brahms, Liszt, Franck, Widor, and Boëllmann
1995, Epiphany Recordings EP-4b
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Liszt Prelude and Fugue on the name BACH:
Kent Tritle at St. Ignatius Loyola
Kent Tritle, Organ
Works by De Grigny, J.S. Bach, Mendelssohn, Franck, Duruflé, and Persichetti
The first recording of the N.P. Mander pipe organ of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
1994, Gothic Records G49068
a track from this CD (.wma)
Listen to Prelude and Fugue on Alain:
Reflections: 4 Contemporary American Composers Look Back
The Dessoff Choirs
Kent Tritle, Music Director
Paul Moravec: Songs of Love and War (1997)
Robert Convery: To the One of Fictive Music (1995)
Ned Rorem: From an Unknown Past (1951)
John Corigliano: Fern Hill (1961, revised 1998)
1999, The Dessoff Choirs release 1101
Rachmaninoff: The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
The Dessoff Choirs of New York City
Kent Tritle, Music Director
Arizeder Urreiztieta, Bass
Mukund Marathe, Tenor
Benefit concert for Russian orphan children, sponsored by the New York City Deanery
of the Orthodox Church in America
1999, The Dessoff Choirs release
Out of the Depths: The Choral and Organ Music of Kevin Oldham (1960-1993)
Kent Tritle, Organ
Camellia Johnson, Soprano
Marble Collegiate Church Choir, William Oldham, conductor
Performed on the N.P. Mander pipe organ of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
1995, VAI Audio VAIA 111
PERFORMANCE REVIEWS
During his 30 years of experience as a leading choral conductor in New York, Kent Tritle has performed a wide range of repertory. But there was one major 20th-century work he had somehow never conducted: Britten’s “War Requiem.” Mr. Tritle filled in that gap on Monday night at Carnegie Hall with a stirring performance of this profound 90-minute score with the Oratorio Society of New York, the 200-voice chorus founded in 1873, joined by the society’s orchestra.
~Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, April 23, 2013 [full text]
It is better in such a case to take an analytic step back and savor the work (Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”) as a whole — its sheer beauty, its exquisite balance of chorus and orchestra, its canny pacing — and its felicitous details. And Mr. Tritle provided plenty of opportunity.
~James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, March 3, 2013 [full text]
Kent Tritle, one of New York’s busiest choral conductors, led the Musica Sacra Chorus and Orchestra in an exemplary rendition of the (Lord Nelson) mass at Alice Tully Hall on Monday evening. The choir sang with beautifully shaped phrasing and dynamics throughout, sounding particularly lovely in the Sanctus.
~Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times, October 24, 2012 [full text]
In July he announced that he would leave the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola to become the director of cathedral music and organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and after leading his last Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert in September, he took up his new post. Chief among his tasks is remaking the Cathedral Choir in his image, and on Wednesday evening he offered a look at that work in progress, in the first of two concerts in a revived Great Music in a Great Space series. … The Cathedral Choir on this occasion was a tightknit 17-voice ensemble, accompanied by a continuo group — Raymond Nagem, organist; Arthur Fiacco, cellist; Roger Wagner, bassist — and its strengths were apparent from the first notes of the Bach motet “Jesu, Meine Freude” (BWV 227). Chief among them was solid, thoroughly unified sound in the chorale movements that frame the motet and punctuate its more ornate verses. And in Bach’s more freely contrapuntal writing, Mr. Tritle oversaw a superbly balanced, carefully sculptured performance.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, March 30, 2012 [full text]
Bringing freshness, let alone novelty, to a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” is a challenge. But the Oratorio Society of New York, under its music director, Kent Tritle, certainly did so on Monday night at Carnegie Hall with a vibrant performance of the piece in the seldom-heard arrangement by Mozart…It was a pleasure to hear the Oratorio Society’s splendid performance of Mozart’s beguiling arrangement under Mr. Tritle, in his seventh season as music director.
~Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, December 21, 2011 [full text]
To anyone who regularly attends choral concerts in New York, Kent Tritle is surely a name to be reckoned with. As the organist and choral director of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue from 1989 until this summer, Mr. Tritle nurtured one of the city’s most formidable music programs. Factor in his activities as the music director of Musica Sacra and the Oratorio Society of New York, his regular show on WQXR-FM and his steady roles with the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, and Mr. Tritle can seem ubiquitous. In a surprising development in July, Mr. Tritle announced his departure from St. Ignatius Loyola to assume the position of director of cathedral music and organist for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on the Upper West Side. … On Wednesday evening Mr. Tritle inaugurated his new role with a solo recital on the cathedral’s Great Organ….
~Steve Smith, The New York Times, November 25, 2011 [full text]
This was his final performance as director of the superb St. Ignatius choir and orchestra, and it seemed that the 10-minute standing ovation that ended the evening was as much for Mr. Tritle’s work over all as for the score and the richly textured, finely polished, high-energy performance.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, September 15, 2011 [full text]
The Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola, conducted by Kent Tritle, the mastermind of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, were everywhere excellent. The chorus seized its real opportunity to shine as a whole in the Handel anthem, to glorious effect…
~James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, May 26, 2011 [full text]
Kent Tritle, who is in his sixth season as music director at the Oratorio Society, seemed keenly aware of this work’s pitfalls and deftly avoided them. His pacing was impeccable: the work’s overall shape and the tempo relationships among the recitatives, arias, ensembles and choruses were carefully judged but never fussy. Even such seemingly small considerations as the transitions between movements were considered: a couple of seconds of anticipatory silence between the chorus “Then Did Elijah the Prophet Break Forth” and the tenor aria “Then Shall the Righteous Shine Forth” perfectly captured the shift from public to private devotion. The Oratorio Society is huge — the roster lists 174 vocalists — but Mr. Tritle had it singing with such transparency that even in the densest passages the words came through clearly, as did each strand in Mendelssohn’s rich harmonic fabric.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, April 28, 2011 [full text]
With 32 fine choristers and 26 orchestra players, the forces were just big enough to make a consistent impact in the large hall, if never an overwhelming one. And it was a particular pleasure to hear the interweaving lines and individual words in the choruses and double choruses play off one another with such clarity…
~James R. Oesteich, The New York Times, February 24, 2011 [full text]
The thirty-two-voice chorus produced a polished, even sound across its four/eight parts (many of the choruses are scored for double choir), with tight ensemble and crisp diction…Kent Tritle conducted energetically, with clear, often poetic gestures…(Handel’s Israel in Egypt)
~Derek Greten-Harrison, Opera News, February 23, 2011 [full text]
A welcome New York revival of Handel’s oratorio Jephtha took place at the Church of Ignatius Loyola on October 13, with the church’s own choir and orchestra under their music director, Kent Tritle, plus a sextet of capable soloists….Jephtha shows Handel’s innovative skill at adapting Baroque conventions to a more fluid, conversational style. … Under Tritle’s alert but unstressed pacing, the appropriately small chorus and orchestra executed their work with verve and discretion.
~John W. Freeman, Opera News, January 2011 [full text]
Musica Sacra follows period practice traditions regarding tempos and ornamentation. The orchestra performed beautifully throughout the evening, with transparent textures, a buoyant pulse and expressive phrasing. Its spry and nuanced playing, both soft-spoken and dramatic in turns, was aptly matched by the fleet, cleanly enunciated and radiant singing of the chorus, which performed with immaculate flair…
~Vivian Schweitzer, The New York Times, December 23, 2010 [full text]
A particular delight of the New York classical music season at its teeming height is the way seemingly unrelated events intersect to produce a spontaneous minifestival, or at least a theme. It happened last week on consecutive evenings, when two of the city’s finest professional church choirs presented contrasting Handel oratorios touching on more or less parallel Old Testament subjects…
~James R. Oesteich, The New York Times, October 17, 2010 [full text]
[Kent Tritle] is the founding director of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, an invaluable series at St. Ignatius Loyola, which opened its season on Sunday afternoon with an organ recital by Mr. Tritle. For all his success at galvanizing choruses and orchestras, it is always gratifying to hear Mr. Tritle play the organ in a recital, the solo activity at the core of his artistry…While he dispatched the grand, rhapsodic and virtuosic Con moto maestoso movement from Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 3 in A, it certainly added to the experience to see Mr. Tritle’s nimble hands and feet at work. He did appear a few times in the choir loft to acknowledge the applause of the audience, including a final standing ovation.
~Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, September 13, 2010 [full text]
With the select 32 members of the Musica Sacra chorus and a chamber orchestra of experienced players, Mr. Tritle conducted an impressively transparent and vibrant “Messiah.” He has worked extensively in the early-music movement. Yet there was no interpretive agenda evident here. The tempos tended to be fleet and the textures clear. But from the first phrases of the orchestral sinfonia that begins the piece, played with crisp but unexaggerated articulation of the dotted-note rhythms, the music-making was beguilingly natural.
~Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, December 22, 2009 [full text]
Hearing the British composer John Tavener’s Requiem in its United States premiere at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Wednesday night, in the opening concert of the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, you felt literally engulfed in pantheistic ecstasy.
~Steve Smith, The New York Times, October 9, 2009 [full text]
Free fantasy and structural formality (the fugue and the chaconne demand both) coexist, and Mr. Tritle deftly balanced the tension between them in a driven, rich-hued performance…He also did as much for Bach’s expansion on Buxtehude’s techniques in the “Wedge” Prelude and Fugue in E minor (BWV 548), playing the prelude assertively and bringing remarkable transparency to the strands of involved counterpoint in the fugue.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, September 18, 2009 [full text]
Contemporary works were the main business of Kent Tritle’s Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert on Wednesday evening at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. But perhaps as a point of reference — as a way to show how far some sacred choral music has traveled, and how completely other works are linked to the past — Mr. Tritle opened his program with a setting of “Lux Perpetua Lucebit Sanctis Tuis,” by the 16th-century composer Philippe de Monte. …The works could hardly have been more varied, but they flourished consistently in the lush, seamless blend that Mr. Tritle’s 32-voice Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola produced.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, February 12, 2009 [full text]
The Top Ten Classical Events
(From #4 “Bernstein at 90”): One especially reverberant moment came during Chichester Psalms [October 1, 2008, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert], which calls for singing the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew. When 11-year-old Andres Felipe Aristizabal intoned the word “Adonai,” it was impossible to disbelieve those green pastures.
~Justin Davidson, New York Magazine, December 7, 2008
The end of Rosh Hashanah brought a pairing of Bernstein’s and Beethoven’s great humanist pleas—Chichester Psalms and the Ninth Symphony—performed in the dazzling nave of St. Ignatius Loyola for the series “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space.” Bernstein would have been pleased at the sympathies between Beethoven’s rock-splitting radicalism and the hard-won simplicity of his own score, between the hortatory German of the “Ode to Joy” and the exuberant Hebrew Psalms. The lusty opening movement got softened a bit by the church’s reverberations, but the payoff was a final timpani blow that an archangel might have struck. Conductor Kent Tritle wrapped the rest of the Psalms in a golden shroud of sound…
~Justin Davidson, New York magazine, October 5, 2008 [full text]
The playing [of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 by the Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola] was unified and electrifying … and in the last [movement], the balance between the orchestra, chorus and soloists was just about perfect.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, October 3, 2008 [full text]
If the Department of Justice investigated conducting monopolies, its agents would be taking a close look at Kent Tritle. Just under two decades ago, [Kent Tritle] started the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola and quickly turned its resident choir into a finely polished, stylistically nimble ensemble. In 2005 he was appointed music director of the venerable Oratorio Society of New York, and this year he added Musica Sacra to his portfolio. That accounts for a significant quotient of high-profile concert choirs in New York, and in the last week Mr. Tritle led concerts by all three.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, May 22, 2008 [full text]
The performance [by the Oratorio Society of New York of Brahms’s “Tragic” Overture] was an animated one…clean and crisply enunciated. [In Brahms’s German Requiem]…the effect was magical, the musicianship superb. …[What was] memorable was the good effort of these dedicated musicians, amateurs in the best and noblest sense of the word.
~Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun, May 22, 2008 [full text]
Mr. Tritle, his superb chamber choir and an orchestra of mostly modern instruments gave a viscerally thrilling performance [of Monteverdi’s Vespro Della Beata Vergine with the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola]. …The soul of the performance was in the malleability of Mr. Tritle’s tempos and dynamics. …When Mr. Tritle and his choir were at their best – in their bright-edged rendering of the “Dixit Dominus” and their warm-hued “Ave Maris Stella,” for example – they tapped into the sublime joy of the work more thoroughly than any ensemble I’ve heard perform these Vespers in a long while.
~Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, May 16, 2008 [full text]
Magicians are generally ill advised to reveal their tricks, but when the conductor Kent Tritle let the audience in on a few crafty secrets during a concert [including Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir] by the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola on Wednesday night, the tactic paid off. As it happened, understanding how Schnittke’s effects were created did not undercut a sense of awe inspired by the intense emotions they conjured…the singers did themselves proud, delivering a deeply heartfelt account with polished tone and excellent diction.
~Steve Smith, The New York Times, February 15, 2008 [full text]
RECORDING REVIEWS
Messages to Myself: New Music for Chorus A Cappella
Musica Sacra/ Kent Tritle – MSR Classics
The choir, as usual, is incandescent. I can’t think of an American ensemble that is any better at balance, variation in tone coloring, warmth, or technical acumen than this bunch…This country should be proud to sport such an ensemble, and conductor Kent Tritle has obviously not let standards wane one little bit.
~Audiophile Audition, May 22, 2014
This is a fascinating survey of a cappella music written by living composers over the past 25 years … there’s not a single work in this mixed sacred-secular program that lacks a high level of musical craftsmanship, imaginative treatment of texts, or strong listener appeal. … This is a sweetly sonorous and technically refined chamber ensemble of just under 30 voices, and Tritle has surely drawn some of New York’s finest vocalists to its ranks.
~American Record Guide, May/June 2013
Cool of the Day, A Cappella Gems through the Centuries
Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
Beautiful disciplined voices, clear diction, precise intonation, homogeneous ensemble, an arching legato line, and solid rhythmic direction—are met in full, with the happy result of a monumental work [Strauss’s German Motet] stunningly performed, captured and preserved on disc. … I know of no other recording that matches the depth and beauty of these performances.
~Fanfare, May/June 2012
Ginastera’s The Lamentations of Jeremiah and Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir with the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola
The Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola sings with an almost desperate affection in both of these works, while director Kent Tritle (also now taking over the reins of Musica Sacra) maintains a firm grip on the overall pace to wonderful effect. Highest recommendation.
~Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition, April 14, 2009
Wondrous Love
The 18 voices of the St Ignatius Loyola choir make up the core of one of the nation’s finest church choirs. Its members are all solo-grade professionals who are active in New York City’s rich opera, oratorio, and period performance scenes. Their singing offers an especially full-throated approach to vocal production, on top of tremendous expressive and dynamic range. Their program is a stunning traversal of mostly ancient and modern music. One of the album’s chief glories is a rich and ringing account of JS Bach’s motet, Komm, Jesu, Komm. This choir’s rich, vibrato-heavy sound doesn’t carry over into all their work. The Renaissance pieces-delivered in crystal-clear straight tone demonstrate their remarkable vocal discipline and finesse. This is one of the albums I’d pull out in a flash to prove to fussy skeptics that America has church choirs that needn’t take a back seat to the best European ones.
~American Record Guide, September/October 2006
All this music is extremely well served by what is evidently an expert choir that has been splendidly trained. The choir makes an excellent sound, and their tuning,balance and diction are all first rate. …Suffice to say that they turn in as good a performance as I’ve heard.
~MusicWeb-International.com
The versatility of conductor and singers is evident in their seemingly effortless traversal of such varied musical material.
~Choral Journal, October 2006
The Romantic Organ
What a major artist Kent Tritle is! Surely he’s our next Virgil Fox and/or E. Power Biggs; he combines the classical approach of the latter with the romantic massiveness of the former. …You’ll not hear better recordings of this kind of music on any label I’m aware of; and Tritle’s performance of Liszt’s “Prelude and Fugue on the name of B.A.C.H.” is the single finest rendition I’ve ever heard.
~Patrick Meanor, Listener Magazine, Winter 1997
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