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This week I headed over to Mission Hills to sit in on a rehearsal of Sacra/Profana.
Who is Sacra/Profana? A semi-professional group founded and directed by one Krishan Oberoi.
Krishan is a Yale educated musician with a master’s degree in conducting. He is a singer himself and has performed in three productions with the San Diego Opera Chorus.
The rehearsal was at the Mission Hills United Methodist Church and went for about three hours.
This was the second rehearsal for their upcoming concert Ex/can/des/cent: music of illumination. The central piece of music for this concert is Gyorgy Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light).
The rehearsal started with the men rehearsing in one room and the women in another with Krishan going back and forth between them.
(http://media.sdreader.com/img/blogs/entry_img/2011/Feb/10/Krishon.jpg)
Krishan rehearsing the women of Sacra/Profana.
The Ligeti piece has sixteen vocal lines, eight women, eight men. I was stunned as Krishan gave the women their starting pitches and they began to rehearse a cappella.
This is untraditional music and the harmonies are not what our ears are used to. To learn this music a cappella, with no piano to reinforce the correct pitches is a Herculean task and the trials of Job all rolled up into one.
The effect of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna is other worldly, or as other worldly as we can get in this world. Once heard, it is a piece of music that we won’t forget.
What the audience misses is the labor of love that goes into learning and then performing such a piece of music.
Ninety minutes into the rehearsal, neither the men nor women had made it completely through the whole nine minutes of Lux Aeterna.
I asked Krishan if any of the singers were paid.
“We’ve got twenty three singers for this concert and sixteen of them will get paid. It’s only $100 each and with the rehearsals and performances that comes out to about $4 per hour.”
Sacra/Profana is one of a handful of choral groups that perform consistently in San Diego and they pretty much do it for the love of music.
Their ex/can/des/cent concert is Feb 19th and 20th. More information is available at www.sacraprofana.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVYu5lyX5M![Image]
This week I headed over to Mission Hills to sit in on a rehearsal of Sacra/Profana.
Who is Sacra/Profana? A semi-professional group founded and directed by one Krishan Oberoi.
Krishan is a Yale educated musician with a master’s degree in conducting. He is a singer himself and has performed in three productions with the San Diego Opera Chorus.
The rehearsal was at the Mission Hills United Methodist Church and went for about three hours.
This was the second rehearsal for their upcoming concert Ex/can/des/cent: music of illumination. The central piece of music for this concert is Gyorgy Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light).
The rehearsal started with the men rehearsing in one room and the women in another with Krishan going back and forth between them.
(http://media.sdreader.com/img/blogs/entry_img/2011/Feb/10/Krishon.jpg)
Krishan rehearsing the women of Sacra/Profana.
The Ligeti piece has sixteen vocal lines, eight women, eight men. I was stunned as Krishan gave the women their starting pitches and they began to rehearse a cappella.
This is untraditional music and the harmonies are not what our ears are used to. To learn this music a cappella, with no piano to reinforce the correct pitches is a Herculean task and the trials of Job all rolled up into one.
The effect of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna is other worldly, or as other worldly as we can get in this world. Once heard, it is a piece of music that we won’t forget.
What the audience misses is the labor of love that goes into learning and then performing such a piece of music.
Ninety minutes into the rehearsal, neither the men nor women had made it completely through the whole nine minutes of Lux Aeterna.
I asked Krishan if any of the singers were paid.
“We’ve got twenty three singers for this concert and sixteen of them will get paid. It’s only $100 each and with the rehearsals and performances that comes out to about $4 per hour.”
Sacra/Profana is one of a handful of choral groups that perform consistently in San Diego and they pretty much do it for the love of music.
Their ex/can/des/cent concert is Feb 19th and 20th. More information is available at www.sacraprofana.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVYu5lyX5M![Image]