SACRA/PROFANA PERFORMS A MOVING AND IMPRESSIVE HOLIDAY CONCERT
The size, terrain and demographics of San Diego have always given it a special relationship to culture and the arts. Though not as big as any number of major cities in the United States, without the centralizing influence of an urban core, existing at the intersection of nations and geographic zones, our city is at once both a collective of diverse cultural boroughs and a major metropolis. This dual nature, which invites a mix of localism and worldliness, has long been one of our particular strengths, and continues to attract artists and new residents from around the nation and the world.
Our choral community is especially multifaceted and rich. San Diego boasts dozens of fine singing ensembles; chief among these is Sacra/Profana, who presented a warm and intimate evening of holiday music Saturday at Christ Lutheran Church in Pacific Beach.
Sacra/Profana has long been one of San Diego’s prominent vocal groups. Under Artistic Director Juan Carlos Acosta, it has a gift for combining high-level technical singing with community consciousness. Recent projects have focused on challenging issues of gender and repertoire, the border and social change, all approached via sophisticated curation and committed performance.
Saturday’s concert, titled “Christmas Reimagined” and led by founder and principal guest conductor Krishan Oberoi, had all the feel of a community gathering. The first half, made up of a thoughtful mix of holiday selections, made it clear how well the singers work together: Shawn Kirchner’s arrangement of “Pat-a-Pan” highlighted sopranos and altos in sectional balance with clear, driving counterpoint, and Oberoi was able to invite a striking range of colors, timbres and weights from the basses. Oberoi’s own arrangement of “Grown-up Christmas List” was charming and featured bass Uriah Brown, whose solo singing was especially soulful and strong.
The singers in Sacra/ Profana are experts in shaping all aspects of their sound. Elaine Hagenberg ’s version of “O Come, Emmanuel” departs almost totally from the familiar plainsong melody, exploring the text through dynamics and dramatic group textures, and the ensemble’s ability to fill the hall with a mass of vocal sound was moving and impressive.
Stephen Sturk’s a cappella setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem “Love Came Down at Christmas” is especially dear, with initial clustered harmonies gradually giving way to broad melodic arcs. Oberoi and singers shaped the pacing carefully, holding the audience from the first moments of the piece. The tenors and basses were compelling here, the intonation of each group solid throughout their registers.
“Amen,” by Brandon Waddles, has all the spontaneous ecstasy of gospel singing: group shouts, portamentos, sudden shifts in chromatic harmony, all handled with the glossy vocal polish that Sacra/ Profana brings to all its work. The singers got as close as a crowd of people can come to imitating a Hammond B3 organ in this rousing end to the first half.
The entire second half of the concert was made up of David Lang’s Pulitzerwinning “The Little Match Girl Passion.” Since its premiere in 2007, Lang’s work has become something of a modern classic. Lang takes the tale of the little match girl by Hans Christian Andersen and maps it, through similarities of layout and narrative, onto J.S. Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” uncovering a kinship between the guiltless victims of the two stories. The piece is big in every sense: long, detailed, emotionally challenging to hear and physically taxing to sing. Oberoi and ensemble met Lang’s work with an astonishing strength and expressive resolve.
In choral music, the admonition is always to “sing the phrase, not just the notes.” Oberoi’s singers sang, as in really sang, the entire work — its phrases, its structure, its content. To be sure, the written score was rendered faithfully and expertly — no easy feat, given the extreme detail of the work’s plan. Movements of Lang’s piece set the drama and the voices of its characters through a variety of textural metaphors. Indeed, one of the work’s most impressive features is the variety of vocal textures Lang creates from one movement to the next. All of these were handled with extraordinary technical expertise, from illuminated vowel production and effortless intonation to sectional blending and group dynamics.
But more captivating was the unity and intensity of expression and focus in crafting an extended emotional narrative that ends sadly while holding promise for the redemption of the witnesses. This was the real impact of Saturday’s holiday event: a coming together, in collective musicmaking, with a brave and unblinking eye on a better future for all of us.