With mixed emotions, we announce that our Canon Director of Music, Christopher Caruso-Lynch, has accepted a call to join the faculty of Madeleine Choir School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Of course, we are very proud of Chris and delighted that he can now join his spouse, Astrid, who also serves on Madeleine’s staff as their Director of Advancement, after living apart and commuting cross-country for almost two years. Madeleine Choir School is a prestigious and remarkable learning community that will benefit greatly from Chris’s many talents, humor, and his dedicated vocation to empowering young people through music. We will be forever grateful for Chris’s reinvigoration of our Choir School and Cathedral Choirs during his nearly five years with us, and we will miss him as a beloved choral director, organist, staff colleague, and friend. You can read more about his new ministry in a letter from Chris to our Cathedral community below.
Chris leaves behind quite a strong Choir School ministry, and we intend to build on his legacy. In the coming months, our Vestry and I will invite our congregation to pause and reflect on our music ministry as a whole before we call a new leader for all of our music ministry. We will invite an Interim Director of music to join our staff by mid-summer 2024 for the 2024/2025 season, and a search is already underway for this person. In the meantime, Chase Loomer, our Associate Director of Music, and Bruno Sandes, our newly named Associate Director of Music for Coro Latinoamericano, will lead our choirs and music program on a day-to-day basis until our Interim Director arrives next summer. We’ll offer more details about these plans at our Annual Meeting in February.
However, our first priority is to thank Chris, say goodbye well, and celebrate Chris’s ministry with us. Join us for a festive Sunday of music and farewell parties on Sunday, January 28, 2024 at our 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. liturgies.
–The Very Rev. Gray Lesesne, D.Min. Dean and Rector
A Letter From Canon Christopher Caruso Lynch
Dear friends,
It’s with a heavy heart that I write to share that I’ll be concluding my time as Canon and Director of Music at Christ Church Cathedral at the end of January 2024. In the new year, I’ll take up a leadership position at the Madeleine Choir School and the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’m excited to continue my vocation there of teaching children through church music and, most importantly, to reunite with my wife, Astrid, who is Director of Advancement at The Madeleine Choir School.
I’m grateful to my wonderful colleagues at the Cathedral for their leadership, support, and good humor. In particular, I’m grateful to Dean Gray Lesesne for his love and support of the choristers and music program at this Cathedral. I’ve been blessed to work with fantastic staff, both administrative and musical, and passionate volunteers. It has been such an honor to benefit from their dedication and incredible musicianship. I’m grateful to the staff and “back row” for encircling our young people with love, support, and community. I’d like to especially thank Chase Loomer, Tyler Regnier, Nathan Wright, Bruno Sandes, Daniel Duarte, and Stephany Cohen for their passionate work supporting the musical life of this place. I also offer my sincere thanks to Coro Latinoamericano and the adult members of the cathedral choir for their friendship and collegiality. Together, we’ve shared some mountaintop experiences that I’ll always treasure. Christ Church Cathedral is blessed to have an engaged, vibrant congregation, and I’m so grateful for the friendship and support the music program has received, and that I’ve received personally. Thank you.
Finally, I want to thank Christ Church Cathedral’s choristers and their families. This incredible group of children come together to serve this cathedral and each other. What they have achieved, individually and as a team, makes me so proud. I’m forever grateful to them and their parents for sharing their lives with me, and for dedicating themselves to serving something bigger than all of us. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for these wonderful years together.
Canon Christopher Caruso-Lynch