The New York music scene was shaken last year when John Scott, the longtime organist and director of music at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, died suddenly of cardiac arrest. On Sunday the church announced his successor: Daniel Hyde, who has been a choir director and organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, since 2009.
“It is an enormous privilege to be invited to become the steward and guardian of this iconic choral legacy,” Mr. Hyde said in a statement. “John Scott was a mentor and inspiration to so many of my generation, and I am humbled to be called to carry on his work and to be a part of the next chapter in the life of St. Thomas Church.”
Among many highly praised performances, the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys’s annual renditions of Handel’s “Messiah,” with the period-instrument band Concert Royal, were, under Mr. Scott, who became director in 2004, regarded as some of the finest in the city.