Breaking: A third Brit gets Fifth Avenue’s top job

Breaking: A third Brit gets Fifth Avenue’s top job

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norman lebrecht

October 19, 2018

The House of God that is Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue has replaced one British music director with another.

Daniel Hyde lasted the barest twinkling of an eye before he was called back to King’s College, Cambridge, as heir to the retiring Stephen Cleobury. Hyde’s predecessor was another Englishman, John Scott, who died suddenly at 59.

The new Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas, to be announced later today, will be Dr Jeremy Filsell.

Filsell, 54,has worked with the BBC Singers and as repetiteur for John Eliot Gardner. He is presently director of music at the Episcopal Church of St. Alban in Washington DC, Artist-in-Residence at Washington National Cathedral, and Professor of Organ at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

His response: ‘Honoured, delighted and humbled.’

Comments

  • PETER LONGSHAW says:

    great news; Jeremy was a dear friend and colleague at Cranleigh School and I last heard him playing Messiaen in Keble, Oxford

  • Adam says:

    Filsell is very good indeed.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    I thought Brexit was going to mean the end of careers and the world as we knew it!!

    • Rog says:

      I’m not quite sure how you think Brexit (which hasn’t happened yet) was going to have a detrimental effect on existing arrangements under which UK citizens are employed in the USA.

  • Neil Thompson Shade says:

    And don’t forget he is Chairman of the Washington, DC American Guild of Organists chapter and columnist for Choir and Organ magazine.

    Congrats Jeremy. Washington, DC will miss you.

  • Lapsed Organist says:

    yes, but does he have any highly relevant experience training choirboys?? He may be a brilliant organist, but this job is really about choir TRAINING. (Singing alto at St George’s Chapel, Windsor under Jonathan Rees Williams, doesn’t count…!)

  • He has, I’m told, become an American citizen.

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