This year’s US tour of the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig was a complete success. The 46 young singers performed a total of eleven concerts in seven states and eight cities. This is the Thomanerchor’s fifth tour of the USA: the choir previously traveled to the United States in 1998, 2000, 2013 and 2017.
Highlights of the tour included performances at Carnegie Hall and at the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) in Dallas, a concert at the renowned Princeton University, a press event on “Leipzig as a City of Music” at the German Consulate General in New York and a visit to the sister city of Houston.
The concert program included works by Francis Poulenc, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein, Frank Martin, Ivo Antognini, Anton Bruckner, Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Johannes Brahms and John Rutter.
NEW YORK
At the beginning of the trip, the Thomaners had the opportunity to explore New York City – they marveled at the Statue of Liberty from the ferry and strolled through Manhattan. With around 500 galleries, 200 museums and 150 theaters, the city is considered one of the most important cultural metropolises in the world. At the same time, it is also a political center: although the US government is based in Washington, D.C., numerous international organizations have their headquarters in New York. This was the first visit to the USA for most of the choir boys.
Princeton
On March 7, the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig gave the opening concert in the University Chapel on the campus of Princeton University, which is steeped in tradition.
Princeton is one of the oldest universities in the United States and was founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey. The university is part of the prestigious Ivy League and has produced numerous personalities in politics, science, sport, art and culture, including two former presidents, 43 Nobel Prize winners, Michelle Obama, Jeff Bezos, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Toni Morrison. It was also the last academic home of Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt taught there as the university’s first female professor.
Like many buildings on the campus, the university chapel is designed in the neo-Gothic style. It forms the religious and ceremonial center of the university. This concert marked the musical prelude to this year’s tour of the USA.
Bethlehem
The next stop was Bethlehem in eastern Pennsylvania, where the Thomanerchor had already visited in 2017. As a matter of fact, the founders of Bethlehem came from near Leipzig!
They were Herrnhuters who came to North America as Protestant missionaries from the Moravian Church or Moravian Brethren (German: Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde) and founded Bethlehem. Herrnhut is a town in Saxony whose Herrnhut Brethren congregation not only sent missionaries all over the world, but also invented the Herrnhut Star, which is still produced there today. Several of them decorate the Thomanerchor’s boarding school hall every Christmas. The Thomaners took part in a guided tour of the historic settlement of the community, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2024.
62 years after the town was founded in 1741, the Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem was also founded, where our concert took place on March 8. The Thomanerchor accepted an invitation from the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, which is dedicated to Bach’s music and regularly sings in this church. As part of the concert, the youth choir “Bel Canto” sang Mendelssohn’s “For he has commanded his angels over you”, MWV B 53, together with the Thomanerchor under the direction of Thomaskantor Andreas Reize.
The long Bach tradition of Bethlehem connects the city’s cultural scene with the Leipzig Bach Festival. In order to further develop the existing connections, Dr. Skadi Jennicke, Mayor of Culture of the City of Leipzig, and Prof. Michael Maul, Director of the Leipzig Bach Festival, were also in the city and guests at our concert. They accompanied part of the trip as a delegation from Leipzig.
NEW YORK – CARNEGIE HALL
On Sunday, March 9, the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig performed at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York – a highlight of this year’s tour. This was the Thomaners’ fourth visit to New York City, where they last performed in 2013.
Although the Thomanerchor is used to the weekly walk from the boarding school to St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, the route from the hotel to Carnegie Hall along 7th Avenue in the middle of Manhattan is a lot busier than Käthe-Kollwitz-Straße in Leipzig. After a fantastic concert, a visit to the famous Time Square was of course a must.
Carnegie Hall is one of the most famous concert halls in the world. Numerous famous artists and personalities have performed there, including Tony Bennett, the Beatles, Maria Callas, Antonín Dvorák, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, George Gershwin, Billie Holiday, Vladimir Horowitz, Gustav Mahler, Sergei Rachmaninov, Louis Armstrong, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Richard Strauss, Peter Tchaikovsky, Arturo Toscanini and Mark Twain.
On March 8, the Thomanerchor also performed at a press event at the German Consulate General, which was dedicated to presenting Leipzig as a city of music. Among the guests were Dr. Skadi Jennicke, Mayor and Councillor for Culture of the City of Leipzig, as well as representatives of the Bach Archive Leipzig and Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH.
Durham
The next concert took the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig to the university town of Durham, North Carolina. Despite the great distances between the concert venues on the tour, the choir tries to cover as many stages as possible by bus. To get from New York City to Durham, the choir therefore made a stopover in Washington D.C.. This is the choir’s second performance at Duke University’s Duke Chapel.
Duke University is a renowned private university and is also known as the “Harvard of the South”. The gigantic campus with its neo-Gothic buildings is also home to Duke University Chapel, where the concert took place. The campus also includes the Nasher Museum of Art, the Duke Forest and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, which attract more than 300,000 visitors every year. After the concert, the day ended with dinner on campus.
Madison
The THOMANERCHOR Leipzig then traveled to Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, and had to set the clocks back by one hour. The US mainland stretches across four time zones, which are between 6 and 9 hours behind Central European Time.
The performance in Madison followed on March 13. Madison is also known as the “City of Four Lakes”: Lake Mendota, Lake Monona, Lake Waubesa and Lake Kegonsa. It is considered a politically liberal city, strongly influenced by the presence of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The concert took place in the Luther Memorial Church, which is located right next to the university and was built in 1923 in the neo-Gothic style. It belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The ELCA is the largest Lutheran church in the USA.
The St. Thomas Choir has already performed in Madison as part of the USA tours in 2013 and 2017.
River Forest
On March 14, the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig performed at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest. River Forest is a suburb of Chicago near Lake Michigan. This is the second visit to River Forest, where the choir last performed in 2017.
Grace Lutheran Church maintains the tradition of Bach cantatas – similar to the Thomanerchor in St. Thomas Church. Once a month, a Bach cantata is performed there on a Sunday afternoon as part of the ‘Bach Cantata Vespers’. We were delighted to support this tradition with our performance.
Houston
On March 16, the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig performed at Rice University as a guest of the Bach Society Houston. Rice University is best known for its research collaborations with NASA.
Houston is an official partner city of Leipzig and maintains close relationships with institutions in the city such as the Thomanerchor and the University of Leipzig, various schools and sports clubs. This is the Choir’s third visit to Houston.
In the morning, the Thomaners attended the service at Christ the King Lutheran Church before their concert. Christ the King Lutheran Church in Houston maintains a partnership with the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Reverend Robert G. Moore, who lives in Leipzig and regularly preaches in St. Thomas Church, also comes from Houston.
On March 17th, the St. Thomas’ students were able to enjoy a day off in the city and visit the Johnson Space Center. NASA coordinates all US space flights from there.
Dallas
On March 18, the Thomanerchor Leipzig gave a concert in Dallas, Texas. The city is one of the largest and economically most important metropolitan areas in the USA and is an important center for finance, technology and culture. Dallas is home to numerous renowned museums, including the Dallas Museum of Art and the Sixth Floor Museum on Dealey Plaza, which commemorates the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The concert took place in the Church of the Incarnation, an Anglican church of the Episcopal Church of the USA. Founded in 1879, it is one of the largest and oldest Episcopal congregations in Texas. The neo-Gothic church is located in northern Dallas and is known for its distinctive church music tradition.
On March 19, the St. Thomanerchor’s tour of the USA came to an end with a special concert as part of the ACDA National Conference, the annual meeting of the American Choral Directors Association. The final concert took place at the Winspear Opera House, one of the most prestigious venues in the arts district of downtown Dallas. The next day, 46 Thomaner returned to Leipzig full of new impressions and experiences.
But the return journey not only marked the end of a successful concert tour – we also celebrated the 813th birthday of the THOMANERCHOR Leipzig. On March 20, 1212, the imperial document was sealed which allowed the Saxon Margrave Dietrich to found a monastery in Leipzig. This document is regarded as the founding date of St. Thomas’, to which the Thomanerchor choir, St. Thomas church and school still refer today.
