Music Director Kent Tritle
“New York City’s foremost choral conductor”
~Time Out New York
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 Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; the Grammy-nominated Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York, the esteemed volunteer chorus; and Music Director of Musica Sacra, New York’s elite professional chorus. Kent is a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School.
An acclaimed organ virtuoso, Kent Tritle is the organist of the New York Philharmonic.
Photo: Jennifer Taylor
Kent Tritle’s 2025-26 season begins with a Musica Sacra “SurRound” program in 360°centered on the Renaissance masterpiece Spem in Alium, a motet for 40 solo voices by Thomas Tallis. The season goes on to feature some of the great works of the choral literature as well as a world premiere: Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor, Handel’s Messiah and Handel’s Alexander’s Feast with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Brahms’s A German Requiem with the Cathedral Choirs of St. John the Divine. With Musica Sacra, he leads a Carnegie Hall holiday program featuring works of Handel, Bach, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff and Helena Paish, and the world premiere of Wayne Oquin’s On the Words of Walt Whitman for soloists, chorus, orchestra, and organ. Kent Tritle also performs his annual recital on the Great Organ of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
As music director of OSNY since the 2005-06 season, and the tenth conductor to lead the Oratorio Society of New York since its founding in 1873, Kent has honed the ensemble into New York’s standard for grand choral performance. He has expanded the chorus’s range to include not only acclaimed interpretations of works such as Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. Matthew Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Verdi’s Requiem, but a broader span of 20th– and 21st-century music – notably the world premieres of An American Trilogy, the trio of oratorios by Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell commissioned by OSNY that include the Grammy-nominated Sanctuary Road.
Musica Sacra’s Music Director since 2008, Kent Tritle has both championed the chorus’s reputation as a interpreter of Baroque and Classical masterworks and broadened its reach of repertoire from medieval music to world premieres. During his tenure, Musica Sacra has presented more than 50 concerts in New York’s most prestigious venues as well as garnered acclaim for performances with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Orchestra of St Luke’s, The Juilliard School, and other cultural landmark organizations, and has released two recordings of music by contemporary composers.
During his tenure at St. John the Divine, Kent Tritle has relaunched and curated the Great Music in a Great Space concert series, with concerts celebrating the many acoustical and spatial possibilities of the world’s largest Gothic cathedral. The professional Cathedral Choir is acclaimed for its excellence under his direction; in addition, with the guidance of Kent’s music ministry team, the volunteer Chorale and the historic Chorister program continue to thrive. Through the concert series and the liturgical music program, Kent has deepened the musical repertoire heard in the Cathedral – highlights include many concerts in collaboration with Rose of the Compass, a Middle-Eastern themed instrumental ensemble, as well as programs ranging from Gregorian chant to world premieres.
Kent Tritle is renowned as a master clinician, giving workshops on conducting and repertoire; recent years have included workshops at the Amherst Early Music Festival, Berkshire Choral International, Summer@Eastman, and at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. As Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music from 2008 to 2022, Kent established the school’s first doctoral program in choral conducting. A Juilliard School faculty member since 1996, he currently directs a graduate practicum on oratorio in collaboration with the school’s Vocal Arts Department.
In more than 150 concerts presented by the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series from 1989 to 2011, Kent Tritle conducted the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola in a broad repertoire of sacred works, and was credited with building the choir and the concert series into one of the highlights of the New York concert scene. From 1996 to 2004, Tritle was Music Director of the Emmy-nominated Dessoff Choirs. Kent hosted “The Choral Mix with Kent Tritle,” a weekly program devoted to the vibrant world of choral music, on New York’s WQXR from 2010 to 2014.
As an organ recitalist, Kent Tritle 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, Dresden’s Hofkirche, King’s College at Cambridge, Westminster Abbey, and St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. As the organist of the New York Philharmonic, he has performed Saint-Saëns’s “Organ” Symphony conducted by Lorin Maazel, Andrew Davis, Antonio Pappano, David Robertson, and Stéphane Denève. He is featured on the DVDs The Organistas and Creating the Stradivarius of Organs. In 2024, Kent was featured in two public television series: Confluence, about art, science, and creativity, in a segment about the pipe organ, and the All-Star Orchestra as the soloist in Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony.”
Kent Tritle’s discography of more than two dozen releases includes recordings on the Telarc, Naxos and MSR Classics labels. His most recent recordings were made live at Carnegie Hall, with works by Moravec/Campbell including the Grammy-nominated performance of Sanctuary Road with the Oratorio Society of New York. With Musica Sacra he has most recently recorded Eternal Reflections: Choral Music of Robert Paterson and Lauds by Laurence Bunin. He recorded Juraj Filas’ Requiem, Oratio Spei, with the Prague Symphony Orchestra and the Kühn Choir, and a host of recordings ranging from Gregorian chant to Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir with the Choir of St Ignatius Loyola. His discography also includes highly acclaimed organ recordings on the Gothic and Epiphany labels.
Kent is the 2020 recipient of Chorus America’s Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art. Other recent honors include the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award from Career Bridges and the 2016 President’s Medal for Distinguished Service from the Manhattan School of Music. Kent is on the advisory boards of the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective (C4) and the Clarion Music Society, and was the 2016 honoree at Clarion’s annual gala.
Kent Tritle holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The Juilliard School in organ performance and choral conducting. He has been featured on ABC World News Tonight, National Public Radio, and Minnesota Public Radio, as well as in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He was featured in the WIRED video series “Masterminds,” an installment titled, “What Conductors Are Really Doing.” Kent is a native of Spirit Lake, Iowa.
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