Frederick Teardo, DMA CONTACT Frederick Teardo is Director of Music and Organist at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. He is also Director of the Choral Ensemble at Advent Episcopal School, as well as University Organist and Lecturer in Organ at Samford University. Prior to his appointment at the Advent in 2012, he held a six-year tenure at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City, where he served first as Assistant Organist and then Associate Organist to the late John Scott.
Dr. Teardo received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, as well as the Master of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees. At Yale, he studied organ with Thomas Murray and harpsichord with Richard Rephann. During his time at Yale, he held the post of Yale University Chapel Organist, and later served as Assistant Organist at Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green in New Haven, CT. Dr. Teardo received his Bachelor of Music degree with Highest Honors from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where he studied organ with David Higgs. His other teachers have included Stephen Roberts and Haskell Thomson. He has also studied improvisation with William Porter and Jeffrey Brillhart.
An accomplished performer, Dr. Teardo has won first prize in several competitions, and has performed internationally both as soloist and accompanist at such venues as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; Washington National Cathedral; Grace
Cathedral in San Francisco; Methuen Memorial Music Hall; Trinity Church Copley Square in Boston; Princeton University Chapel; Overture Hall in Madison, Wisconsin; the Thomaskirche in Leipzig; the Frauenkirche in Dresden; and the Berliner Dom. Dr. Teardo’s solo recording is available from JAV Recordings, and features works of Bach, Boyvin, and De Grigny on the historic 1741 J.A. Silbermann organ of Saint Thomas Church in Strasbourg, France. He has been a featured performer at National and Regional Conventions of the American Guild of Organists and Organ Historical Society, on American Public Media’s Pipedreams, and BBC Radio 3. As an organist, he can be heard on five CD recordings with the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, and as a conductor recorded A Service of Advent Lessons and Carols in 2018 with the Cathedral Choir from the Cathedral Church of the Advent. Dr. Teardo is also active as a choral conductor, having led the RSCM Gulf Coast Course in 2015. He also leads choral workshops and makes guest conductor appearances across the Southeast. He is founder and artistic director of the Birmingham-based choral ensemble Highland Consort, which has performed numerous concerts, sung in masterclass with VOCES8, and been featured at the 2017 Sewanee Church Music Conference, the Alabama ACDA Conference in 2019, and the 2021 International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Literature and Language. Most recently, he led the Choir of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in residency at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London this past July.
