Kent Tritle is one of America’s leading choral conductors and organists. He is founder and Music Director of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, the acclaimed concert series now in its nineteenth season at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City. In more than 120 concerts he has conducted the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola in a broad repertoire of sacred works, from Renaissance masses and oratorio masterworks to important premieres by notable living composers.

As Director of Music Ministries at St. Ignatius Loyola, Mr. Tritle oversees a program that annually produces more than 400 services with music. Since his appointment there in 1989, he has led the church’s professional choir to critical acclaim and developed the 50-voice volunteer Parish Community Choir. He was artistic consultant on the design and installation of the church’s four-manual, 68-stop mechanical action organ, which was dedicated in 1993. This instrument again drew national attention in July 2007 in a program of organ concertos for the American Guild of Organists conducted by Mr. Tritle, with corresponding critical success. Mr. Tritle holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The Juilliard School in organ performance and choral conducting and has been on the Juilliard faculty since 1996, currently directing a graduate practicum on oratorio in collaboration with the school’s Vocal Arts Department. He has been a featured personality on ABC World News Tonight, National Public Radio, and Minnesota Public Radio, as well as in The New York Times and numerous other radio and print outlets, and is sought after as a master clinician giving workshops on conducting and repertoire.

In January 2006, Mr. Tritle was appointed Music Director for the Oratorio Society of New York, New York City’s second oldest cultural institution. Subsequent concerts at Carnegie Hall with OSNY have garnered critical acclaim from The New York Times. He most recently conducted OSNY at the new Music Palace in Budapest, Hungary, in a performance of Honegger’s Le Roi David. From 1996-2004, Mr. Tritle was Music Director of the Emmy-nominated Dessoff Choirs, winners of the ASCAP/Chorus America award for adventurous programming of contemporary music. Under his direction the Dessoff Choirs performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, and Czech Philharmonic, as well as in many performances of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, including a nationally telecast “Live from Lincoln Center” concert of Mozart’s Requiem. Mr. Tritle has prepared choruses for conductors Christoph von Dohnányi, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Robert Spano, Gerard Schwarz, Vladimir Spivakov, Nicholas McGegan, Leon Botstein, and Dennis Russell Davies. Among the soloists with whom he has collaborated are singers Renée Fleming, Jessye Norman, Hei-Kyung Hong, Marilyn Horne, Susanne Mentzer, Susan Graham, and Sherrill Milnes; cellist Yo-Yo Ma; pianist André Previn; and actor Tony Randall.

Kent Tritle is also Organist of the New York Philharmonic. He recently was soloist with the Philharmonic in Saint-Saëns’s “Organ Symphony” both at Avery Fisher Hall and in Vail, Colorado. He has appeared often as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As an organ recitalist he performs regularly in Europe and across the United States. Recital venues have included the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris; King’s College, Cambridge and Westminster Abbey.

With the Philharmonic he has recorded Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Britten’s War Requiem and Henze’s Symphony No. 9, all conducted by Kurt Masur, as well as the Grammy-nominated Sweeney Todd conducted by Andrew Litton. He is featured on the DVD “The Organistas” and “Creating the Stradivarius of Organs,” and has recorded more than a dozen CDs on the Telarc, AMDG, Epiphany, Gothic, VAI and MSR Classics labels. His most recent CD with the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola, Wondrous Love, has been heralded by the American Record Guide, The Choral Journal, and The American Organist magazines. For Universal Classics, he produced Glorious Pipes, a compendium of great organ music.

Mr. Tritle serves as a board member of the Director of Music Ministries Division for NPM. He counts Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and the University of Iowa as places of profound influence in his artistic development. Since 2006 he has been Associate Conductor of Musica Sacra (NYC).

Nancianne Parrella is Associate Organist at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. She works closely with director Kent Tritle in the Church’s extensive liturgical music program and is featured frequently on the acclaimed concert series, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space. In July 2007 she played Stephen Paulus’s Concerto for Organ, Timpani, Percussion and Strings on the remarkable Mander Organ, with Mr. Tritle conducting, for the New York Regional Convention of the AGO. The American Organist magazine hailed her recent CD Les Corps Glorieux, performed with cellist Arthur Fiacco and harpist Victoria Drake, as one that “…exudes a spirit of lovely serenity...,” and her Jubilations, recorded with the St. Ignatius Brass as “…sweeping, dramatic and awe inspiring…”

Her Organ Plus! recitals have become a favorite at St. Ignatius, showing the versatility of the Mander organ with different combinations of instruments both in original repertoire and transcriptions. This year’s program will feature Nancianne with Arthur Fiacco, cellist and Jorge Avila, violinist. Other recent Organ Plus! concerts were given at New York’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church; Calvary Church, Summit, NJ; and St. Agnes Cathedral, Rockville Center, NY. She was featured with Mr. Fiacco at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival Organ Series in Charleston, SC and in concert at Stone Church in Cragsmoor, NY.

Other notable performances include the world premiere of Mack Wilberg’s Dances to Life at the ACDA Regional Convention at St. Thomas Church, NY, with the St. Ignatius Choir, Kent Tritle, conducting; Bloch’s Sacred Service and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with Voices of Ascension, Dennis Keene conductor; a live broadcast on WNYC of Brahms’ four-hand piano arrangement of Ein Deutsches Requiem and Liebeslieder Waltzes with Scott Warren at Trinity Church, Wall Street, Owen Burdick, director; and a concert by AMUSE, co-conducted with Andrew Henderson at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. At Montclair University, NJ, she was a featured accompanist for choirs directed by Heather Buchanan, in a concert series celebrating Montclair’s new concert hall.

She was one of two organists, along with Scott Dettra, who played the 2004 US premiere of John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, featured at the Lincoln Center Festival. At the Spoleto Festival USA, she played Julian Wachner’s Cymbale and Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani. Of the Wachner performance, the Charleston Post and Courier reported that “…Nancianne Parrella as featured soloist took charge of Mr. Wachner’s vigorous complexity with gusto and aggressive control. Her physicality matched his role as conductor, which proved as vital and engaging as his music.”

Among America’s preeminent choral accompanists, Nancianne Parrella is an Emeritus Faculty at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, NJ, where she was accompanist and assistant director of the famed Westminster Choir and Symphonic Choir directed by Joseph Flummerfelt. She toured and recorded extensively with Westminster Choir and can be heard on their most recent CD Heaven to Earth released by AVIE. Ms. Parrella was long associated with America’s pioneering choral conductor, the late Robert Shaw, with whom she toured in France, Brazil and America. At Trinity Church, Princeton, she worked with John Bertalot and was, for many years, organist at the Bethlehem Bach Festival directed by Greg Funfgeld. She has collaborated with such noted conductors and orchestras as Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic; Wolfgang Sawallisch and The Philadelphia Orchestra; Zdenek Macal and Neeme Järvi and the New Jersey Symphony; and James Bagwell and Louis Langreé in New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

Nancianne Parrella has recorded on MSR, AMDG, AVIE, Chesky, Delos, Gothic, Dorian, Telarc and Teldec. She is featured in the remarkable DVDs The Organistas and Creating the Stradivarius of Organs, which reveal the development of the King of Instruments, and the design and installation of the N.P. Mander Organ at St. Ignatius. Both are released by Pheasant Eye Productions.

Hailed by the New York Times as “a technically nimble and dynamic organist,” Renée Anne Louprette has established an international career as an organ recitalist and choral conductor. As Associate Director of Music at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City, she assists in the direction of the renowned music ministry program serving as liturgical organist, accompanist and conductor of both professional and amateur ensembles, as well as liaison to the three Jesuit schools connected to the institution. As collaborator in the artistic direction of the acclaimed Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert series, she directs the N.P. Mander Organ Recital Series and performs regularly as recitalist and continuo player. She makes her conducting debut this season on the SMSS series in Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien. In February 2008, she will also be a featured guest conductor of Amuse, a New York City based women’s vocal ensemble. Prior to St. Ignatius, she was full-time Director of Music and Organist at the Church of St. Ann in Avon, Connecticut, and Church of the Immaculate Conception in Montclair, New Jersey.

In 2007, Ms. Louprette was appointed to the faculty of the John J. Cali School of Music, Montclair State University in New Jersey, as visiting specialist in organ. As a keyboard pedagogist, she is particularly interested in introducing young piano students to the organ. Her international performing experience includes organ recitals at the festivals of Magadino, Switzerland; In Tempore Organi, Italy; Ghent and Hasselt, Belgium; and Toulouse Les Orgues, France. She has participated in the international organ competitions of Chartres, France; Bruges, Belgium; and the national competition of the American Guild of Organists. In July 2007, she was a featured soloist of the Region II Convention of the American Guild of Organists in New York City, performing music of Ned Rorem and Poulenc’s Organ Concerto at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola.

An esteemed accompanist, Ms. Louprette has worked with a number of well-established choirs and orchestras in New York City including the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall, Musica Sacra, the Dessoff Choirs, the National Chorale and Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, Orchestra of Our Time and Piffaro. She has also performed with numerous New England-based choral ensembles including CONCORA (Connecticut Choral Artists), Chorus Angelicus and Gaudeamus (at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood) and at the Bard Music Festival (Ives and Haydn festivals), Bard College, New York. She has performed with l'Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Musica Nova and Antiphona ensembles of Toulouse, Orchestra New England, and the keyboard trio TRIPTYCH directed by composer Paul Halley. European accompanying engagements included performances in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the festival Éclats de Voix in Auch, France. She performs regularly as keyboardist for the Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera.

Renée Anne Louprette holds a Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude in piano performance and a Graduate Professional Diploma in organ performance from the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, where she began organ studies in 1993 with Larry Allen. She pursued private studies in organ with Dame Gillian Weir in London and with James David Christie. She earned a Premier Prix mention très bien in 2003 from the Conservatoire National de Région de Toulouse, France, under the guidance of Michel Bouvard, Jan Willem Jansen and Philippe Lefebvre. In 2005, she won a Diplôme Supérieur in organ performance from the Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de Musique et de Danse de Toulouse.

Music Administrator Erin Acheson came to St. Ignatius Loyola in June 2005 from Columbia Artists Management LLC. At CAMI she was Managerial Assistant to Vice President/Artist Manager Mary Jo Connealy, working with artists such as Vladimir Spivakov, Christian Zacharias, Claude Frank, Valentina Lisitsa & Alexei Kuznetsoff, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Rudolf Buchbinder, and the Empire Brass. Prior to her work with CAMI, she held the position of Managing Director at the S.E.M. Ensemble in Brooklyn. Erin graduated summa cum laude from Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, with a Bachelor of Music degree in French horn and vocal performance. Upon graduation, she was accepted into the internship program at The Juilliard School where she worked in the orchestra library for the 1998-1999 season.