Why are you named Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus?

The name Sacred and Profane refers to the title of Benjamin Britten’s final work for chorus – Sacred and Profane: Eight Medieval Lyrics, Op. 91. We performed the entire challenging and remarkable cycle in our 40th anniversary concert in May 2018. In my program notes, I wrote: all but one of the movements are settings of anonymous poems, and there is no consistent theme either in the texts or in the compositional techniques used to set them. However, some themes do reappear in the works – a sense of connection with the natural world, a reckoning with an existential or spiritual crisis, and a general juxtaposition of religious and secular experience.

More significantly, our name points to the intentional embrace of diversity in all that we do – we sing both sacred and secular music (usually within a concert), we aim for diversity of repertoire in style, genre, and era; region and language; and composer background in regards to gender, sexual preference, and ethnicity; and religious beliefs (including atheists and secular humanists). We celebrate the diversity of our Berkeley and East Bay community, of our singers, and of our audiences.

What kind of music do you perform?

While we love to share the stage with guest instrumentalists on occasion, we mostly sing unaccompanied music. As a choral ensemble, we are excited about the huge selection of beautiful and moving repertoire at our door – over 1,000 years of music that covers the globe, styles, and subject matters. We love traditional music and we’re not ignoring our historical greats (Brahms, Bach, and more), but we actively seek to promote composers that should be part of the canon, including composers of color and women. Unlike some choral ensembles who are defined by their social justice mission, we have a broader goal to present high quality music that we love and hope our audiences love too. However, we often do lean in on social justice, including music from LGBTQ perspectives, about civil rights, about climate change, and so on. We also love shining the spotlight on Berkeley and Bay Area-based local talent, including composers and collaborative musicians.  In the early years, Sacred and Profane sang primarily Western art music (classical) and folk arrangements. We now seek a broader umbrella for genre and include pop and jazz arrangements and we love to include singers who are eclectic in their music tastes and vocal skills.

If you are not a religious choral group, why do you sing in churches?

When choosing our performance venues, we look for a variety of factors – is it reasonably accessible to public transportation? Is it in a nice neighborhood where people congregate? Is it ADA accessible? Is it affordable for our small nonprofit? But one of the main criteria is that our venues have somewhat live acoustics appropriate for choral performance, and churches are often designed specifically to support choral singing. We would love to choose performance spaces that feel more accessible to everyone and we keep our eyes open for non-sacred spaces that fit the bill. 

We do seek to reach greater audiences, particularly in our home city of Berkeley. We perform regularly at the Downtown Berkeley Farmers Market and the Solano Stroll. We also offer a no-barriers free and accessible Open Rehearsal concert each year in November.