The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York City, has announced the appointment of Kent Tritle as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist, effective September 1.
He succeeds former director Bruce Neswick, who will join the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music as associate professor of music.
Tritle has been Director of Music Ministries at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan since 1989, where he oversaw a program of more than 400 services annually, led the church’s professional choir, and developed a 45-voice volunteer parish choir. With graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Juilliard School in organ performance and choral conducting, Tritle also directs the Oratorio Society of New York and Musica Sacra, and is Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music and a member of the graduate faculty of the Juilliard School—capacities in which he will continue.
Tritle comes to the cathedral three years after its post-fire rededication and the restoration of its Great Organ, built in 1911 by Earnest M. Skinner, and enlarged and rebuilt in 1954 by G. Donald Harrison of the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company.
Tritle will work at the cathedral with such various artists in residence as the Forces of Nature ensemble and the Paul Winter Consort. He will direct the St. Francis Day and Blessings of the Animals and Earth Mass; the music of such major feasts as Christmas and Easter, including the majestic pageantry and solemnity of Cathedral liturgies; and serve as director, mentor and inspiration to cathedral school and adult choristers. (Photo credit: Jennifer Taylor)
