2020-2021 Season
Connections
Sacred & Profane’s 43rd Season
We’re going digital this season to keep choral music thriving in the age of teleconferencing and social distancing. While we can’t rehearse together physically, we’re exploring new musical opportunities that the challenges of distance present. Our repertoire combines both canonic choral works with brand-new pieces that utilize technology with timely themes—music that allows us to stay connected with one another through our artistic expression, to collaborate, to build bridges in times of social upheaval, to raise our voices for those that are not always heard, and to provide that human comfort during times of stress.
Stay tuned for more details about the live broadcasts, special productions, and more that we have planned. We’re looking forward to sharing music and connecting with you in a new way!
ALL SEASON
Composer Connections
We’re excited to launch Composer Connections this season, a new series that connects audiences with the composers behind the music we perform. Enjoy intimate conversations with our director and composers near and far to explore their creative inspirations, processes, and lives as composers in the strange new landscape outside the concert hall. This series provides a unique look past the score to connect through our shared language of music—to illuminate the people and stories in between the notes on the page that give the choral music deeper meaning.
Featuring:
October 2020: Karin Rehnqvist
February 2021: Trevor Weston
May 2020: Karen Siegel
AUTUMN 2020
I Hope You’re Doing Well: Health and Harmony
As a global pandemic continues to shape our world, we’re exploring facets of public health through music, from physical health to emotional wellness with musical texts of illness, healing, and the power of reaching out to loved ones. We’re excited to share music by composers from the last century to contemporary works written during COVID-induced social isolation, like American composer Dale Trumbore’s I Hope You’re Doing Well for online choir, which echo the sentiments of communicating and connecting in our brave new world. We’re raising a prayer for healing with Karen Siegel’s Justice Choir Songbook work Ana El Na reimagined for remote choir, and Estonian spiritual minimalist Arvo Pärt’s Beatitudes. We’ll present Stacey Gibbs arrangement of the African American spirituals There is a Balm in Gilead and Morten Lauridsen's calming Sure on This Shining Night. We’re thrilled to be joined by master Haitian percussionist Jeff Pierre in our performance of Frè O, an arrangement of a Haitian traditional Vodou chant for healing.
December 19, 2020 | 6pm
WINTER 2021
Make Our World Anew: Black Voices Matter
We’re proud to amplify underrepresented voices and bring composers of color to the forefront in solidarity with the Black Voices Matter Pledge, an initiative to celebrate the culture and experiences of Black Americans and commit ourselves as choral artists and organizations to anti-racist work. We’ll be perfoming Rosephanye Powell’s setting of Langston Hughes’ poem To Sit and Dream and Henning Sommerro’s Norwegian anthem against violence, injustice, oppression. We are thrilled to present Trevor Westons Martyrs, a new work we co-commissioned with C4 Ensemble that sets texts from Psalm 39, a Renaissance isorhythmic motet by Guillaume Dufay, and newly-composed texts about breath and its relevance to the present moment. The piece is both a plea for protection and a warning about the senseless and unnecessary deaths caused by COVID-19 and by excessive police force against African Americans. We’re also excited to perform Ysaÿe Barnwell’s We Are in collaboration with Oakland Youth Chorus Chamber Singers, under the direction of La Nell Martin.
March 20, 2021 | 6pm
SPRING 2021
Nearness of You: Staying Connected
Reach out and connect with us! Connection is more important than ever these days, and we rely on both our technological connections to keep working, but more importantly the human connection of family and community. Our spring repertoire explore these concepts of connection with Dale Trumbore’s A Way to be With You for online choir, Kirby Shaw’s arrangement of the standard Nearness of You for low voices, and Brian Tate’s Connected. Sacred and Profane will also present a premiere of a consortium commission composed by Karen Siegel, a choral meditation to help us through these unprecedented times, Cell PlanetsCells Planets—Erika Lloyd’s charming pop song originally arranged for Chanticleer by Vince Peterson, and Natt över jorden (Night Above the Earth) by Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist.
June 5, 2021 | 6pm