Richard Tanner is appointed the Nancy B. and John B. Hoffmann Organist and Director of Music of St. Thomas Church and Choir School, New York, New York, where he leads the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. He has specialized in the training of boy and girl chorister voices for over thirty years. As music director, organist, and producer, he has made over fifty recordings and has worked extensively for the BBC. For twenty years he was a regular musical director and organist for BBC Radio 4’s Daily Service, and he has also directed and played for several broadcasts from London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
Orchestras that he has conducted include Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the period instrument ensemble Canzona, and The Bliss Sinfonia, which he founded. Recordings as a conductor, both with the Northern Chamber Orchestra, include Requiem and Organ Concerto by David Briggs and The Manchester Carols by Carol Ann Duffy and Sasha Johnson Manning. His organ recordings are available on Spotify, including Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur. He has given masterclasses in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and has directed choral courses in Sweden and for RSCM America.
Tanner was a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, student at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and organ scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied for a degree in music at Oxford University. He has held posts at St. Albans Cathedral, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Royal Naval College Chapel Greenwich, All Saints’, Northampton, and Blackburn Cathedral, where he was director of music for thirteen years. Immediately prior to his appointment in New York, Tanner was director of music at Rugby School, one of the oldest co-educational boarding schools in Britain. There he was responsible for a large team of professional musicians and students with broad musical interests. Under his leadership, the choir performed at Carnegie Hall in 2017 and at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Rugby World Cup at Twickenham stadium. The choir regularly appeared on BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong, and its singers won the BBC Young Chorister of the Year competition in 2017 and 2022. In 2021 Tanner founded the Rugby Choristers at Bilton Grange, the UK’s newest choral foundation in the Anglican choral tradition, with separate choirs of boy and girl choristers singing six choral Evensongs each week during term time alongside professional adult singers.
A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, Tanner was elected to its Trustee Council in 2025 and in the same year became a trustee of the Rodolfus Choral Foundation. Tanner is married to soprano Philippa Hyde, and they have two sons: James, a recent graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London, and Benedict, a music scholar at Rugby School and organ scholar at Chichester Cathedral.
For further information: richardtanner.co.uk and saintthomaschurch.org.
Other recent appointments:
Victoria Shorokhova to First United Methodist Church, Montgomery, Alabama
Kathleen Scheide to Peace Lutheran Church, Perkasie, Pennsylvania
