Thomas Lloyd is a classical conductor, composer, and singer who currently serves as Canon for Music and the Arts at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral (since 2010) and Artistic Director of the Bucks County Choral Society (since 2000). He is Emeritus Professor of Music at Haverford College, where he directed the combined Choral and Vocal Studies Program for Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges from 1996-2018. The premier recording of his 70-minute choral-theater work Bonhoeffer by The Crossing was nominated for a 2017 Grammy in the Best Choral Performance category. He has composed three other longer works and over 40 shorter choral and solo voice compositions setting both sacred and secular texts. Lloyd was recently named as the recipient of the 2024 Elaine Brown Award for Choral Excellence by the ACDA of Pennsylvania for lifetime achievement in the choral field.
Lloyd’s compositions have also been performed by ensembles including the University of San Diego
USD Choral Leadership Collaboratory & Sacra/Profana, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Asheville (NC) Choral Society, Lyric Fest, the Keystone State Boychoir, the Bel Canto Children's Choir, the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Senior Choir, and the Philadelphia Singers.
In 2011, Lloyd was designated a "Creative Connector" by Leadership Philadelphia, WHYY, and the Knight Foundation for his work developing collaborative projects across cultural divides, both locally and internationally. He has led twelve international choir tours involving collaborative concerts with local choirs. His Haverford/Bryn Mawr chamber choir has shared concerts with host choirs in Berlin, Mexico, Turkey, Ghana, Poland, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, as well as with the HBCU choirs of Howard, Lincoln, and Fisk Universities. He has led the Bucks County Choral Society on tours to Estonia (for the Estonia Song Fest), Russia, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Brazil, and Cuba. Choirs under Lloyd’s direction have performed at conferences of Chorus America and the American Choral Directors Association. In partnership with the late Helen Kemp, he founded a nationally recognized “Singing for Seniors” program for the Bucks County Choral Society, bringing together senior choirs from all over the county for biannual festivals. He is past board chair and current Advisory Board member for the Women’s Sacred Music Project, and currently serves on the Anti-Racism Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia, for which he has led collaborative workshops on singing the African American Spirituals.
Lloyd has published and presented scholarly articles on topics including the African-American spiritual, sacred jazz for choirs, teaching sacred music in secular contexts, the music of Hans Gal, and cross-cultural tour collaborations. His work has been been the subject of arts segments on public television and radio throughout the Philadelphia region, including an hour-long, prime-time 2020 WHYY Christmas special filmed outdoors during the Covid pandemic in collaboration with J. Donald Dumpson and the Philadelphia Heritage Chorale. Lloyd holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory (BM bassoon), Yale Divinity School (MAR pastoral theology), and the Yale School of Music (MM voice and opera). He also studied at the Tanglewood, Blossom, and Salzburg festivals. Following a ten-year interlude as an IT manager on Wall Street, where he rose to the level of Vice President at Prudential Securities, Lloyd returned to music in the doctoral program in conducting at the University of Illinois, where he completed the DMA in 1994.
Thomas Lloyd's son, Jeremy, is also an active composer of musical theater and founding producer/composer of the electronic R&B band Marian Hill and of cleareyes.