Dr. Gerre Hancock has been a veritable institution in the Episcopal Diocese of New York as well as on the national and international church music scene for several decades. Having served for the past 33 years as Organist and Master of Choristers at St. Thomas in Midtown Manhattan, Hancock is laying down the hat of premier music director in the Anglican tradition in the United States and doffing the hat of educator and mentor to students at the University of Texas, Austin.

Dr. Gerre Hancock

With a cathedral-like space, world-renowned location and boys’ choir school providing young voices for the church choir, Hancock saw a church with the potential for musical greatness. And in the past three decades, Hancock and his wife, Dr. Judith Hancock, Assistant Organist, have steadily pushed the music program at St. Thomas to new heights, as a national model for the traditional Anglican-style music.

It seems almost anomalous that Hancock, with his keen sense of the essence of the Anglo-style, grew up in western Texas, attending evangelical services, since going to church “was as natural a part of the activities of the family as going to school or work,” Hancock explained. It was at church that Hancock’s love for music blossomed, since it was there that he “heard all kinds of stirring and wonderful music.” It was at church that Hancock realized that he “loved the sound of the organ.” So Hancock, having begun piano at a young age, “at 10 years old became determined that I must learn to play the organ.”

Hancock began studying organ playing earnestly in high school and continued during his studies at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree in the organ. He then received a fellowship to study in Paris for a year, where he was under the tutelage of renowned organists Jean Langlais and Nadia Boulanger.

After serving two years in the army, Hancock moved to New York for the first time and began his advanced degree in Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, where he first met his wife, who was also a student at the time. In New York, Hancock studied with Robert Baker and Searle Wright, both well-known musicians.

“I have been lucky since childhood having the most wonderful teachers,” Hancock said.

Hancock then was appointed Assistant for the music program at St. Bartholomew’s, Manhattan, and it was during that tenure that he and his wife “got the Anglican bug,” as he describes it, and both were confirmed at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine by Bishop Horace Donegan. “It was an unforgettable experience,” Hancock remarked.

After St. Bart’s, Hancock worked for nine years as Organist and Choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati, OH, before returning once again to the Episcopal Diocese of New York at St. Thomas.

The church was rife with musical possibilities that were not being attained. The choir of a European-Anglican tradition was relatively inactive, which Hancock sought to change.

“Since St. Thomas is in mid-Manhattan where a lot of people visit and where many of the hotels are that they stay in, I thought it was important to offer as much worship and choral worship as possible,” he said. “This is thought of as a midtown cathedral, and we are a larger community that just our parish.”

The rector at St. Thomas when Hancock and his wife first arrived was the Rev. Canon John Andrew, “a musical rector,” as Hancock described him, from whom Hancock said that he learned a great deal from, including about music.

The music program was increased at St. Thomas to include evensongs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as well as choral services on Saturday and two on Sunday. The church had always held well-known organ concerts, which he continued and are held on Sunday afternoons from September to May. Hancock also holds four to five choral concerts a year with orchestras, including with early music instruments to accompany early works.

Over the years, St. Thomas’ choir has produced a number of recordings, has sung on national television and performed during domestic and international tours. The choir was in Italy in April, where the choristers sang during a beatification ceremony in Rome.

Today, the main choir has 18-20 boys from the adjacent St. Thomas Choir School and 14 adult male singers who are professionals from around New York.

Hancock cites three highlights of his career at St. Thomas, during which he worked with “three marvelous rectors,” he said. The first important event was in 1981 when Hancock was able to get the church’s porous tile ceiling sealed to prevent the holes from absorbing so much sound.

The second highlight for Hancock was the addition in 1996 of a Taylor & Boody organ, christened the Loening-Hancock Organ, done on the occasion of the Hancocks’ 25th anniversary at the church. The organ is designed and crafted to replicate the instruments found in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Third, Hancock is proud of the fact that a fourth grade was added to St. Thomas Choir School in 1997, allowing the students more time to learn and sing in the choir. Hancock credits the school with providing the boys with “a superb education” and characterizes the students as “very eager, very keen and very fortunate.”

So now the couple move on to the University of Texas at Austin, where Hancock will work to build up the Church Music curriculum and revitalize the program, with the intention of eventually creating a Church Music Master’s degree at the school.

“It’s like starting a new career,” he said. “It’s a different deployment of ministries.” And he is excited about the change. “It is a great challenge, and I do best when I am challenged.”

At a time when church music programs are closing, such as at the New England Conservatory of Music and at Northwestern University, Hancock hopes he is “bucking the trend” at UT. He will be teaching courses in improvisation and repertory and his wife in keyboard studies. The program will be ecumenical, focusing broadly on Judeo-Christian services and music.

Hancock added, “I will miss most of all the beauty of St. Thomas and its architecture and the beauty of the boys’ voices. I am grateful for each of the 33 years, which have been rich with blessings.”

And he will also miss that special magic that arises when playing in St. Thomas.

“The greatest high is when, in the midst of liturgy, the organist and the choir click, the men and boys are in tune and everything is in good tune – call it a dramatic experience, a musical experience, a religious experience – but it is when it all comes together,” he described. “It is a transcendent experience, and it makes it all worthwhile. It takes a lot of hard work and faith and God’s grace for it to happen. And when it happens, you know it.”