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    Trinity Church’s ‘Messiah’ Is Still the Gold Standard

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    The church’s urgent and eloquent version of Handel’s classic oratorio remains an inspired communal rite.The holidays are a time for traditions — and for doubting them. Is Grandma’s ham drier than you thought when you were young? Is the movie the whole family watches every year maybe a little offensive?For me, the question on Wednesday was whether Trinity Wall Street’s version of Handel’s “Messiah” would be as good — as bracing, as riveting, as disturbing and consoling — as I remembered.Seeing Trinity’s “Messiah” for the first time, in 2011, showed me the galvanic possibilities of this classic work more than any recording or live outing I’d ever heard. This wasn’t the usual, quaintly sleepy Christmas routine, but a seething, electrically direct and dramatic enactment of an oratorio that both describes and calls for transformation: “And we shall be changed,” its crucial line promises.It had been a good few years since I’d heard the church’s Handel. But when people would ask me for a “Messiah” recommendation among the many options that pop up in New York each December, I always replied with a single word: Trinity.This “Messiah” long achieved its exhilarating quality because of an exceptional in-house choir and period-instrument orchestra — and because of Julian Wachner, Trinity’s director of music and the arts, who led the church’s medieval-to-modern music program with energy and ambition.Early last year, Wachner was fired by Trinity before the church completed an investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct against him, but after it found he had “otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position.” (He has denied the allegations.)His departure left one of the jewels of the city’s artistic and spiritual scenes leaderless until early this month, when the church announced that Melissa Attebury would be its next director of music. For almost two years, Trinity has depended on staff and guest conductors, including, for this year’s Handel, Ryan James Brandau.And what a relief to find that Trinity’s “Messiah” is still burning and gladdening, vivid in both darkness and light. If Brandau’s account lacked some of Wachner’s charged, even savage intensity, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. The performance on Wednesday added some elegance to the urgent, heartfelt directness, the emphasis on communication, that has been Trinity’s standard in this piece.The soaringly resonant acoustics of Trinity Church smoothed some of the choir’s bite into airy creaminess, but the passion was still palpable. And while the orchestral sound was sleeker than I recalled, it had the same stirring commitment and bristling responsiveness to the vocalists, as well as a glistening, pastoral dawn quality to the shepherds.These forces are truly an ensemble, aided by my favorite aspect of the church’s version. Most “Messiah” presentations bring in a quartet of opera singers for the solos. Trinity’s soloists — almost 20 of them — come forward from the choir, giving the oratorio the feeling of an intimate, alternately sober and joyous communal rite, modest yet monumental.This practice also allows the ensemble to show off the strengths of its roster — no soprano is ideally suited to all the work’s soprano arias — and to experiment. In 2017, Wachner switched the traditional genders of all the solos, a change thrillingly recalled this year by having Jonathan Woody, a bass-baritone, blaze through “He was despised,” instead of the standard female alto.There was more sense than there usually is of the range of emotion within numbers, not just between them. The tenor Stephen Sands was calm, then pressing in the beginning of the work, and the soprano Madeline Apple Healey was sprightly, then tender in “Rejoice greatly.”Brandau guided the score so that “Hallelujah” seemed to emerge from the preceding numbers, which gradually rose in fieriness. And he, choir and orchestra built patiently to the work’s true climax — “The trumpet shall sound,” sung with annunciatory power by the bass-baritone Edmund Milly and accompanied with eloquence, on a difficult-to-control, valveless natural trumpet, by Caleb Hudson — before the shining waves of the final “Amen.”Though pleasant enough, a pared-down New York Philharmonic’s “Messiah,” heard on Tuesday, paled in comparison. Conducted by Fabio Biondi, the founder of the distinguished period-instrument group Europa Galante, in his debut with the orchestra, this Handel was a little stolid in the first part, though with more crispness and color in the second and third.Fabio Biondi made his debut with the New York Philharmonic conducting Handel’s “Messiah.”Chris LeeThe quartet of young vocal soloists made little impact in tone or interpretive zest; the star here was the venerable Handel and Haydn Society Chorus, from Boston. A few dozen strong, it sounded rich yet lucid, with metronomic clarity in the burbling 16th notes of “And He shall purify” and with evocative gauziness in “His yoke is easy.” Biondi led a lithe, brisk “Hallelujah,” seemingly designed to make this omnipresent number a bit more unassuming than the norm.Beyond the start of “Messiah” season, this was a banner week for early music in New York. On Saturday, the Miller Theater hosted the Tallis Scholars at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Manhattan, part of the ensemble’s 50th-anniversary tour. And yet more Handel: On Sunday, Harry Bicket and the English Concert continued their annual series of concert performances of his operas and oratorios at Carnegie Hall with “Rodelinda.”“Messiah” is Christmas music, but not entirely, since Jesus’ birth occupies only a few minutes of this long meditation on his life and example. The Tallis Scholars, though, offered a real Christmas program of largely Renaissance works focused on the shepherds who receive the news of the Nativity.Under their founder and director, Peter Phillips, these 10 singers displayed the floating silkiness, light without seeming insubstantial, that has been Tallis’s trademark over its remarkable career.With the parts of Clemens’s “Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis” interwoven with other pieces, the concert was notable for its exploration of different composers’ treatments of the same texts. Pedro de Cristo’s straightforwardly lyrical, almost folk-inflected “Quaeramus cum pastoribus” preceded Giovanni Croce’s grander version. And Jacob Obrecht’s plainchant-and-elaboration “Salve regina” came before Peter Philip’s later, more declamatory one.At Carnegie, the English Concert brought its characteristic spirited polish — moderate yet exciting — to “Rodelinda,” a work that Bicket has helped make a sterling recent addition to the Metropolitan Opera’s standard repertory. The cast of six was individually impressive and, even better, well matched. The soprano Lucy Crowe’s voice warmed in the title role as the afternoon went on, and her portrayal was gripping from the start. The countertenor Iestyn Davies, as her believed-to-be-dead husband, Bertarido, had, as usual, special time-stopping persuasiveness in slow music.It was refined work. But the performance over the past week that has lingered with me most is clear. If someone asks for a recommendation — for the holidays, or for music in New York in general — my answer is the same as it’s been for years: Trinity’s “Messiah.” More

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      Onstage, It’s Finally Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas Again

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      The Rockettes are high-kicking their way through the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. The Sugarplum Fairy, after an unsought interregnum, is presiding over the Land of Sweets at the New York City Ballet. All around the country, choirs are singing hallelujahs in Handel’s “Messiah” and Scrooges are learning to replace bahs with blessings.After two years of Christmastime washouts — there was 2020, when live performance was still impossible in many places, and then last winter, when the Omicron wave stopped many productions — arts-lovers and arts institutions say that they are determined that this will be their first fully staged holiday in three years.“It feels absolutely like the first Christmas post-Covid — there are more tourists in town, Times Square feels very alive again, people are venturing out in a way that I haven’t witnessed since 2019, and sales are more robust across the board,” said Eva Price, a Broadway producer whose musical last year, “Jagged Little Pill,” permanently closed as Omicron bore down, but whose new musical, “& Juliet,” is thriving as this year’s holidays near.Performances of holiday fare, including “The Nutcracker,” Handel’s “Messiah” and, here, “A Christmas Carol,” have become treasured rituals for many families.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesFor arts lovers and arts presenters, late December looms large. Performances of “The Nutcracker,” “A Christmas Carol” and “Messiah” are cherished holiday traditions for many families. Those events are also vital sources of revenue for the organizations that present them. And on Broadway, year-end is when houses are fullest and grosses are highest.“‘A Christmas Carol’ is the lifeblood of our institution,” said Kevin Moriarty, the artistic director of Dallas Theater Center, which first staged an adaptation of the Dickens classic in 1969, and had been doing so annually since 1979 until the pandemic. Most seasons, the play is the theater’s top seller.Last year, Moriarty’s effort to bring the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future back onstage — still with mask and vaccine requirements for the audience — faltered when Omicron hit, and the final 11 days of the run were canceled. “It just felt like the knockout blow we hadn’t seen coming — it felt like things will never get back to normal,” Moriarty said.Handel’s “Messiah” was back at Trinity Church Wall Street in Manhattan. Calla Kessler for The New York TimesDallas was one of many arts institutions wounded by Omicron. The Center Theater Group of Los Angeles canceled 22 of 40 scheduled performances of “A Christmas Carol,” losing about $1.5 million. On Broadway, grosses dropped 57 percent from Thanksgiving week to Christmas week, when 128 performances were canceled. Radio City Music Hall ended its run of the “Christmas Spectacular” with the Rockettes more than a week before Christmas. And the New York City Ballet canceled 17 of 47 scheduled performances of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” costing it about $5 million.“The virus just made it impossible to go on,” said Katherine E. Brown, the executive director of the New York City Ballet, where “The Nutcracker” has been a tradition since 1954. “It was more than a little depressing, and there were lots of disappointed people, onstage and off.”This year: so far, so good. “It’s going really well,” Brown said. “I don’t want to tempt the fates by saying that too loudly, but it’s actually back to prepandemic levels, and even slightly higher. It feels like we’re really back, and the energy in the houses is just phenomenal.”Of course there are still viruses in the air this year: public health officials are warning of a “tripledemic” of the coronavirus, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V. Covid cases and hospitalizations have risen nationally since Thanksgiving, and New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, donned a face mask on Tuesday as he urged New Yorkers to take precautions. One new Broadway play, “The Collaboration,” had to cancel several performances this week, including its opening night, after someone in the company tested positive for the coronavirus.But with Christmas just days away, there have yet to be the wholesale closings that marred last year. And now most people over six months old can be vaccinated, and there is a new bivalent vaccine, lowering both risk and anxiety.“We learned a lot from last year: there are more understudies in place, there is more crew coverage, and we have contingency plans that feel more spelled out,” Price said. Brown agreed, saying, “Through the school of hard knocks, we’re better at managing through it.”“George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” is being staged once again by New York City Ballet, which had to cut its run short last winter because of Omicron. Sterling Hyltin danced the Sugarplum Fairy in a performance last month. Erin BaianoThe upheaval last winter upended many holiday plans.Mike Rhone, a quality assurance engineer in Santa Clara, Calif., had tickets to the Broadway musicals “Hadestown,” “Flying Over Sunset” and “Caroline, or Change,” and planned to propose to his partner in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.Instead he proposed at home, on the couch. But they’ll try again this year, with tickets to “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Ohio State Murders,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and the Rockettes. “We’ll definitely get that photo in front of the Rockefeller Center tree,” Rhone said, “just as married people instead of newly-engaged.”Shannon Buster, a civil engineer from Kansas City, Mo., had tickets last year to several Broadway shows and a set of hard-to-score restaurant reservations. “The night before we left, we watched handsome David Muir deliver dire news about Omicron surging, Broadway shows closing, restaurants closing, and we canceled,” she said. This year, she was determined to make the trip happen: “I swear by all that is holy that even an outbreak of rabid, flesh-eating bacteria will not keep me from it.” Last weekend, she and her husband made the delayed trip, trying out some new restaurants and seeing “Death of a Salesman” and “A Strange Loop.”For performers, this year is a welcome relief.Scott Mello, a tenor, has been singing Handel’s “Messiah” at Trinity Church Wall Street each Christmas season since 2015. Last year he found himself singing the “Messiah” at home, in the shower, but it wasn’t the same. “It didn’t feel like Christmas,” he said. This year, he added, “feels like an unveiling.”Ashley Hod, a soloist with New York City Ballet, has been part of its “Nutcracker” for much of her life — she performed in it as a child, when she was studying at the ballet’s school, and joined the cast as an apprentice in 2012; since then she has performed most of the women’s roles. Last year she rehearsed for two months to get ready to go on as the Sugarplum Fairy, but the show was canceled before her turn arrived.“It was devastating,” she said.This year, she’s on as a soloist, and thrilled. “We all have a new appreciation for it,” she said. “Everyone feels really lucky to be back.”On Broadway, things are looking up: Thanksgiving week was the top-grossing week since theaters reopened. And there are other signs of seasonal spending: Jefferson Mays’s virtuosic one-man version of “A Christmas Carol,” which he performed without an audience for streaming when the pandemic made in-person performances impossible, finally made it to Broadway, and is selling strongly as Christmas approaches.Beyond Broadway, things are better too. In New Orleans on Tuesday night, Christmas Without Tears returned — it’s a rambunctious and star-studded annual variety show hosted by the performers Harry Shearer and Judith Owen to raise money for charity (this year, Innocence Project New Orleans).Some “Messiah” fans seemed to be in the Christmas spirit. Calla Kessler for The New York Times“The audience was so primed, ready, and wanting the show,” Owen said. “It was like they’d waited two years for this.”But there are also reasons for sobriety: Broadway’s overall grosses this season are still about 13 percent below what they were in 2019, and this fall a number of shows, struggling to find audiences, have been forced to close. Around the country, many performing arts organizations have been unable to bring audiences back at prepandemic levels.Not everyone is rushing back. Erich Meager, a visual artist in Palm Springs, had booked 10 shows over six nights last December. Then the Rockettes closed, then “Jagged Little Pill,” then two more. “Each morning we would wake up and see what shows were canceled and search for replacements, a less than ideal theater experience,” he said. “This year we are staying close to home for the holidays, but next year we’ll be back.”But many patrons are ready to celebrate.“There have been so many virtual performances, but it’s not really the same thing,” said Luciana Sikula, a Manhattan fashion industry worker who had been attending a performance of “Messiah” annually at Trinity Church Wall Street until the pandemic, and finally got to experience it again in person again this month.Jeffrey Carter, a music professor from St. Louis who had booked and canceled five trips to New York since the pandemic began, finally made it this week; he checked out the new Museum of Broadway as well as an exhibit at the Grolier Club, caught the Oratorio Society of New York’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall, and saw “A Man of No Importance,” “A Strange Loop” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” “I’m packing in N.Y.C. at Christmastime in four days and four nights,” he said, “and I’m catching up — in person — with people I love.” More

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      Around New York, Different Ways of Hearing Handel’s ‘Messiah’

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      Two performances, at Trinity Church Wall Street and the New York Philharmonic, were similar yet showed how beauty emerges in divergence.We have arrived at that point in the holiday season when it seems as though you could attend a different performance of Handel’s “Messiah” every few days.On Friday and Saturday, the Trinity Baroque Orchestra and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street returned to their newly restored home, Trinity Church Wall Street, for their first “Messiah” there since 2018. The fresh stained-glass facade, illuminated from within, shined like a beacon to concertgoers approaching from down the street. Inside, the narrow nave seemed to huddle everyone together for a communal purpose.A few days later, on Tuesday, the New York Philharmonic, joined by the Handel and Haydn Society, began a five-day “Messiah” run at its own recently remodeled home, David Geffen Hall. The lobby — conceived as a gathering space with seating areas, a bar and furnishings so mundane they must have been designed to be unintimidating — bustled with audience members and laptop users. Poinsettias lined the brightly lit stage in the auditorium.The venues did more than set a mood; they participated in the performance. Each one’s distinctive acoustics complemented the ensemble’s style. If Trinity felt more immersive, and the Philharmonic more pro forma, they both offered memorable qualities that made a case for the city’s annual “Messiah” abundance.The Trinity players were performing “Messiah” in their home venue for the first time since 2018.Calla KesslerIn the coming days, the festivities accelerate. Kent Tritle leads two ensembles in “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall: on Monday, the Oratorio Society of New York, which takes a cast of hundreds approach with its massive choir; and on Dec. 21, Musica Sacra, which uses Baroque bows to add a dash of period style. The National Chorale will rent Geffen Hall for a participatory “sing-in” on Sunday. And there are free “Messiah” singalongs at Christ Church Riverdale in the Bronx on Saturday, and “Hallelujah” flash mobs around Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 21.Trinity, which offered one of the first performances of “Messiah” in New York, in 1770, and the Philharmonic, whose founder conducted its first full concert in the city, can both lay claim to a piece of the work’s history. This season, both had the advantage of a Baroque-music specialist at the helm, with Andrew Megill at Trinity and Masaaki Suzuki at the Philharmonic. They even used the same performing edition from Oxford University Press.But beauty emerged in the places where they diverged.Trinity’s period-instrument ensemble and choir produce a light, precise, nimble sound that gains warmth and richness in the church’s acoustic. At Saturday’s performance, which was livestreamed, the use of an organ, played by Avi Stein, as opposed to a harpsichord, provided a mellow, cloudlike underlay. The string players rendered every flourish as fresh arcs of sound.The countertenor Reginald Mobley, front, at David Geffen Hall, where Masaaki Suzuki led the New York Philharmonic in “Messiah.”Chris LeeTo get a sense of just how well-drilled Trinity’s choir is, you can strip away the church acoustic by watching a video of its 2019 “Messiah,” conducted by Julian Wachner at St. Paul’s Chapel while its home church was being renovated. In the chorus “And he shall purify,” taken at a breakneck yet sprightly pace, the notes tumble evenly in time.The Philharmonic uses modern instruments whose boldness gains clarity in the clean resonance of its new auditorium. In the opening Symphony, the players sliced through the air with dramatic fervor, their trills landing a little heavily in Suzuki’s stately tempo. The harpsichord, folded into the texture, emitted an appealingly gentle tinkle. Over the course of the evening, though, Suzuki’s tempos lagged, and the players seemed to meander through the music unless it had theatrical flair — common in Handel’s operas, but rare here.Where Trinity’s choir prizes dexterity, the choristers of the Handel and Haydn Society make evocative use of timbral contrast. In “And he shall purify,” the choral sections stacked atop one another in staggered entrances that amassed into a smoothly luxuriant texture. “For unto us a child is born” was a marvel of color: The tenors offered a sense of wonder; the altos, excitement; the basses, appreciation; the sopranos, confidence.The baritone Jonathon Adams made a singular Philharmonic debut. Adams, who identifies as two-spirit — the term used by Indigenous communities for those who are nonbinary — did not put on airs. Dressed humbly in loose black clothes, they sometimes hunched over their score, almost crumpling into it, before opening their mouth to reveal a magnificently sonorous timbre. Adams enunciated words like a deep-toned voice-over artist and used classic Handelian word painting in the aria “The people that walked in darkness,” adopting a shadowy tone before opening up into resplendent high notes on the word “light.” This was good old-fashioned oratorio style, in which singing is an elevated form of recitation.For its “Messiah,” the Philharmonic was joined by the Handel and Haydn Society chorus.Chris LeeThe Philharmonic’s other soloists included the soprano Sherezade Panthaki, who scrupulously shaped her music by approaching top notes with a diminuendo. In slow passages, the countertenor Reginald Mobley spun a gossamer sound that frayed at faster tempos. The tenor Leif Aruhn-Solén, whose glimmering voice didn’t cut in any register, showed questionable taste in ornaments, dynamic contrast and his pantomime of the text.Trinity doled out Handel’s solos to the members of its choir. Many of them, with vocal techniques built for tonal blend and rhythmic precision in a chorus, favored a straight tone that gleamed like white light but also exposed waywardness in pitch. Still, period style doesn’t mean stilted: Some of the singing in the more fiery arias was positively gutsy. Male altos, who created an intriguing softness within the aural fabric of the chorus, contributed solos so subtle they almost evaporated. The soprano Shabnam Abedi showed lovely warmth in “How beautiful are the feet”; and the bass-baritone Brian Mextorf had a light, handsome tone in “The trumpet shall sound.”Trinity would appear to have the more heartfelt and historically informed performance but for one moment at the Philharmonic: As the audience in Geffen Hall stood in respectful attention for the exalted music of “Hallelujah,” Adams could be seen at the side of the stage, singing heartily with the bass section.As Clifford Bartlett, the editor of the Oxford edition, noted in his introduction to the score, the soloists in Handel’s time likely sang the choruses as well. I couldn’t hear Adams, but I shared the reaction of their fellow soloists, who appeared both delighted and disarmed by Adams’s sincerity of expression — a reminder that “Messiah,” after all the variance in instrumentation, style and performance practice, is an act of community. More

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      Trinity Church Fires Conductor After Misconduct Accusation

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      The conductor, Julian Wachner, denied the allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2014. The church said it had not verified the accusation, but fired him for behavior “inconsistent with our expectations.”Trinity Wall Street, the powerful New York church, said on Monday that it had fired its music director after receiving an allegation of sexual misconduct against him.On Saturday, Trinity said it had placed Julian Wachner, its acclaimed director of music and the arts, on leave as it investigated the allegation, which stemmed from a 2014 incident. But in a statement on Monday, the church’s rector, the Rev. Phillip A. Jackson, said that the church had fired Mr. Wachner.“The investigation is ongoing, and thus the investigator has not yet made any determination about the veracity of the 2014 allegations,” the church’s statement said. “Still, we have concluded based on recent information that Julian has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position. For this reason, Trinity has decided to end Julian’s employment with Trinity as of today.”The allegation was made by a former Juilliard School employee, Mary Poole. Ms. Poole said in an interview with The New York Times that during a music festival in Aiken, S.C., in 2014, Mr. Wachner pushed her against a wall, groped her and kissed her, and that he ignored her demands that he stop.Mr. Wachner denies the accusations. His lawyer, Andrew T. Miltenberg, said in an email on Monday: “We are exceptionally disappointed that Trinity has acted prior to completing a thorough investigation. Depriving Mr. Wachner of the benefit of the full narrative is the antithesis of due process and allows distortions to triumph over the truth.”Two people interviewed by The Times — a friend of Ms. Poole’s and a former colleague — recalled hearing Ms. Poole describe the details of the encounter with Mr. Wachner at the time. Ms. Poole said she did not report the incident to the police since she was in another state and pressed for time in the middle of a tour. She did report the incident to Juilliard, which said on Saturday that it was aware of “unacceptable conduct” by Mr. Wachner in 2014 and that it had not hired him again.Mr. Miltenberg, Mr. Wachner’s lawyer, said on Monday that “Juilliard’s statement, which Mr. Wachner saw for the first time in The New York Times, is flawed and erroneous.” He added that “Mr. Wachner continues to dispute the nearly decade-old, misleading and untrue allegations made against him.”In an interview on Monday, Ms. Poole praised Trinity’s decision to fire Mr. Wachner, adding that it was important that the church lead a thorough investigation into his behavior.“I hope this is the beginning of a bigger conversation about how we handle harassment in classical music, and how conductors are often held on a pedestal,” she said. “Everybody needs to be held accountable for the same kind of appropriate behavior in the workplace.”A conductor and composer, Mr. Wachner oversaw Trinity’s critically praised choir, Baroque orchestra and contemporary-music ensemble, which together present hundreds of events each year. These forces have perhaps been best known for their annual performances of Handel’s “Messiah”; in 2018, The Times credited Mr. Wachner with leading “the best ‘Messiah’ in New York.”In recent months, he has emerged as one of three finalists to serve as the next artistic director of the renowned Oregon Bach Festival. The festival has not responded to requests for comment. More

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      Trinity Church’s Conductor Put on Leave Amid Investigation

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      Julian Wachner has been accused of sexually assaulting a Juilliard School employee during a music festival in 2014. He denies the accusation.Trinity Wall Street, one of New York’s wealthiest and most powerful churches, said on Saturday that it was placing its high-profile director of music on leave as it investigates an allegation of sexual misconduct against him.The director, Julian Wachner, a highly-regarded conductor, composer and keyboardist who has been a fixture at the church for more than a decade, has been accused by a former Juilliard employee, Mary Poole, of sexual assault. Ms. Poole said in an interview with The New York Times that during a music festival in 2014, Mr. Wachner pushed her against a wall, groped her and kissed her, and that he ignored her demands that he stop. Mr. Wachner denies the accusations.In a statement to The Times on Saturday, Trinity did not mention Ms. Poole by name but said the church first learned of “allegations of sexual misconduct” against Mr. Wachner last month from social media. Ms. Poole recently posted a detailed account of her encounter with Mr. Wachner on her social media accounts, saying, “I was totally violated.”Trinity said it had hired outside counsel to investigate. “Julian was placed on administrative leave on March 1 and will remain on leave during the investigation,” the church said in its statement. “Trinity takes these allegations very seriously.”Mr. Wachner, through an attorney, denied the accusations.“We respect Trinity’s decision to conduct a thorough investigation,” said the attorney, Andrew T. Miltenberg. “Ms. Poole’s outrageous allegations are categorically false and my client looks forward to the matter being resolved. Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation we cannot comment further at this time.”Ms. Poole helped organize a 2014 Juilliard festival in Aiken, S.C., that featured Mr. Wachner and the acclaimed Trinity choir. In the interview, Ms. Poole said that one evening, at a house where Juilliard staff members were staying, Mr. Wachner asked her to get him a drink. While she was preparing the drink in the kitchen, she said, he began to grope and kiss her for almost two minutes, even as she told him repeatedly to stop.Two people interviewed by The Times — a friend of Ms. Poole’s and a former colleague — recalled hearing Ms. Poole describe the details of the encounter with Mr. Wachner at the time. Ms. Poole said she did not report the incident to the police, since she was in another state and pressed for time in the middle of a tour.In the interview, Ms. Poole, who was 24 at the time, said that she felt powerless in dealing with Mr. Wachner, an influential figure in the classical music industry. “I felt like I could not defend myself,” she said, adding that at the time she worried she might suffer professional consequences if she spoke up. She said that she still has panic attacks that she attributes to the encounter.Ms. Poole reported the incident to Juilliard, which vowed not to hire Mr. Wachner again.In a statement on Saturday, Juilliard said it was aware of “unacceptable conduct” by Wachner in 2014.“Sexual misconduct or discrimination are not tolerated at Juilliard, and we take all allegations very seriously,” the school said in a statement. “At the time we offered our full support to Ms. Poole and informed Mr. Wachner that he would not be invited back to Juilliard in the future. Since that time we have had no relationship with Mr. Wachner.”Trinity, one of the city’s wealthiest churches, has a portfolio of office buildings, stock investments and residential development worth $6 billion — and a critically acclaimed music program.As director of music and the arts, Wachner oversees the church’s choir, its Baroque orchestra and its contemporary ensemble, which together present hundreds of events each year. He is perhaps best known for his annual performances of Handel’s “Messiah” — in 2018, The Times credited him with leading “the best ‘Messiah’ in New York.” He has been nominated for Grammy Awards and has collaborated with leading organizations, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Opera.In recent months, Wachner has emerged as one of three finalists to serve as the next artistic director of the renowned Oregon Bach Festival. The festival did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday. More