Kent Tritle is one of America’s leading choral conductors.  He is founder and Music Director of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, the acclaimed concert series entering its 21^st season at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City; Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York and of Musica Sacra; Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music; and a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School.  An acclaimed organ virtuoso, he is also the organist of the New York Philharmonic. 

In more than 120 concerts presented by the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, Kent Tritle has conducted the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola in a broad repertoire of sacred works, from Renaissance masses and oratorio masterworks to premieres by notable living composers.  Mr. Tritle and the choir recently performed in the opening festival of radio station WNYC’s new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, on a concert bill with René Pape, John Zorn, Ute Lemper, and Nico Muhly.  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. 

Kent Tritle will in 2009-2010 mark his fifth season as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York, New York City's acclaimed 200 voice volunteer chorus. In addition to leading the Society’s annual Messiah performances at Carnegie Hall, he has conducted repertoire such as Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem and Tragic Overture, Paul Moravec’s Songs of Love and War, and the Fauré Requiem. The Oratorio Society recently joined the Juilliard Orchestra in a performance of Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” conducted by Alan Gilbert, part of the Bernstein: The Best of all Possible Worlds festival sponsored by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall. 

In February 2008 Mr. Tritle was appointed Music Director of Musica Sacra, succeeding Richard Westenburg, who founded New York’s premier presenter of sacred music performed by a professional chorus in concert halls, and had designated Mr. Tritle as his successor.  Recent concerts have included a program of works by Arvo Pärt and Morton Feldman for a WNYC New Sounds Live concert; Bach’s Mass in B Minor and the annual performances of Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall; and performances of Bach’s St. John Passion and Orff’s Carmina Burana with a world premiere by Alessandro Cadario at the Rose Theater, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. 

Kent Tritle is renowned as a master clinician giving workshops on conducting and repertoire.  In July 2008 he was a featured conductor at the Berkshire Choral Festival, where he led a performance of Handel’s Solomon performed by a chorus of 215 voices. 

From 1996 to 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. 

As organist of the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Tritle was recently the soloist in performances of Saint-Saëns’ “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 at 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. 

At the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Kent Tritle was artistic consultant on the design and installation of the 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. 

Kent Tritle has made more than a dozen recordings on the Telarc, AMDG, Epiphany, Gothic, VAI and MSR Classics labels. His recent CD with the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola, Wondrous Love, has been praised by the American Record Guide, The Choral Journal, and The American Organist magazines.  

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, and teaching choral conducting. 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.  

For more information, sound clips, and updated concert information, visit www.kenttritle.com.

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 concert series, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space. As part of last season’s celebration of the 15^th anniversary of the N. P. Mander organ, she was featured in both an Organ Plus! recital, and in the Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony. For this 20^th anniversary season of SMSS, she will be organ soloist in the Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle, and she will inaugurate the organ recital series with an Organ Plus recital with Arthur Fiacco, cello; Victoria Drake, harp; and Jorge Avila, violin.

Ms. Parrella’s signature Organ Plus! recitals, which demonstrate the versatility of the organ with various combinations of instruments, have become audience favorites, both at St. Ignatius and elsewhere. This season, Ms. Parrella opens the series at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, with an Organ Plus! recital. Previous programs have been presented at New York’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church; Calvary Church, Summit, NJ; and at St. Agnes Cathedral, Rockville Center, NY. Ms. Parrella has also been featured with Mr. Fiacco at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival Organ Series in Charleston, SC.

In June 2008, Ms. Parrella was named Artistic Director of the Interlude Concerts and Chamber Series of the new Gettysburg Festival in Pennsylvania, and as part of the first Festival she performed an organ and brass concert and accompanied the New York Choral Artists, both conducted by Joseph Flummerfelt. The Interlude series is based on the Intermezzo series of informal, late-afternoon concerts she founded for the Spoleto Festival USA.

Continuing her active recital career, Nancianne Parrella will perform during the 2008-2009 season at All Saint’ Episcopal Church, Fort Worth, Texas, and at the Princeton University Chapel. She will help celebrate the American Guild of Organists International Year of the Organ, both on the New York City Chapter recital and as soloist with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Symphony Orchestra, where she will perform both the Poulenc Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani and Stephen Paulus’s Concerto for Organ, Timpani, Percussion, and Strings.

In 2007, Ms Parrella performed the Paulus concerto for the New York City Regional Convention of the AGO. Other notable recent performances have been with both Musica Sacra and the Oratorio Society of New York conducted by Kent Tritle; with Voices of Ascension under Dennis Keene; with the Choir of Trinity Church, Wall Street; and with the women’s ensemble AMUSE. At Spoleto Festival USA, she played Julian Wachner’s Cymbale and the Poulenc concerto. 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 member at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, New Jersey, 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. She has also collaborated with noted conductors: 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.

Her church music collaborations include Frederick Grimes at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, New York City, and its Bach Vespers, and with John Bertalot at Trinity Church, Princeton, NJ. She was also organist for the Bethlehem Bach Festival, directed by Greg Funfgeld, for many seasons.

Nancianne Parrella has recorded on the MSR, AMDG, AVIE, Chesky, Delos, Gothic, Dorian, Telarc and Teldec labels. 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 St. Ignatius Brass as “…sweeping, dramatic and awe inspiring…” 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 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. 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 keyboard pedagogist, she is particularly interested in introducing young pianists to the organ. An active recitalist, she has appeared 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 in an acclaimed performance of music by Ned Rorem and Poulenc’s Organ Concerto. In 2009, she will perform recitals at Westminster Abbey in London, the Dunloaghaire Festival in Dublin and Galway Cathedral in Ireland and as organ soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane, Australia in Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony under the direction of her husband, French conductor Emmanuel Plasson.

Ms. Louprette has performed with a number of New York City ensembles including the Clarion Music Society, American Symphony Orchestra, the Dessoff Choirs, Gotham City Orchestra, Oratorio Society of New York, Cantori New York, the National Chorale and Orchestra, Orchestra of Our Time and Piffaro, performing in such venues as Carnegie, Avery Fisher and Merkin Halls and the Miller Theatre of Columbia University. She has performed with l'Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Musica Nova and Antiphona ensembles of Toulouse and Orchestra New England. European accompanying engagements included performances in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the festival Éclats de Voix in Auch, France. She is a member of the keyboard trio TRIPTYCH which performs original compositions for piano, organ and harpsichord by Canadian composer Paul Halley.

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 has pursued private studies 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. A CD of organ masterworks played by Ms. Louprette on the N.P. Mander Organ at St. Ignatius Loyola will be released on the MSR Classics label in 2009.

Robert Reuter, singer, pianist, choral conductor, composer and arranger, currently serves as director of the Wallace Hall and Canticum Sacrum choirs, and is accompanist for the Children's Choirs at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City. Additionally, he serves as co-director of the Parish Community Choir as well as director of music for the Grammar School and IREP liturgies throughout the year.

Prior to moving east to New York City, Mr. Reuter was choir director, accompanist and cantor at St. Martin of Tours parish in San José, California, and accompanist for the Santa Clara University Mission Choir in Santa Clara, California. He began his involvement in music ministry at a young age, and is an alumni of Music Ministry Alive!, a summer school and festival for liturgical musicians founded and directed by composer David Haas. Through his involvement with Music Ministry Alive!, he has collaborated with a number of liturgical composers and musicians, including David Haas, Lori True, Bob Hurd, and Bobby Fisher.

As a singer, Mr. Reuter has performed a number of music genres including opera, choral, musical theater, jazz and pop. In 2006, he was chosen as tenor soloist for the world premiere of Pamela Layman Quist's Requiem for the People. The work was premiered with the Santa Clara Chorale on the west coast and was subsequently taken on tour to the Czech Republic and Vienna, Austria.

Mr. Reuter joined the music staff at St. Ignatius in April of 2007.

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.