The Pacific Mozart Ensemble (PME) is a volunteer choral organization based in Berkeley, CA. The group was formed to provide a chorus of professional quality for highly-skilled and experienced singers who did not wish to make singing a full-time profession. It was to be large enough to perform the major concert literature, but small enough to remain highly selective. PME presents a wide range of choral musical styles, including, but not limited to, traditional choral literature, new works by contemporary composers and a cappella jazz and pop. PME performs at least three self-produced concerts sets each year, along with various collaborations, often with prominent artists including Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck

David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...

, Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk

Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

, Kent Nagano

Kent Nagano

__FORCETOC__Kent George Nagano is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.-Biography:...

 & Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came...

. The first and second concerts of the year (typically Nov and March) are classically-oriented programs. Over the years these programs have tended toward 20th century composers. The chorus has become known around the San Francisco Bay Area for its innovative programming. A particular highlight came in 2002 when the chorus performed Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

’s Der Lindberghflug alongside works by Phillip Glass, Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk

Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

 and David Lang

David Lang (composer)

David Lang is an American composer living in New York City. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion.-Biography:...

. The concert was presented in the East Bay on the aircraft carrier Hornet and in San Francisco in the newly constructed Aviation Museum at SFO. The 3rd concert set each year is an all a cappella ‘pops’ concert featuring the group in various formations from 2 up to 50, performing arrangements of jazz, pop, rock, & folk tunes.

Origins

PME was formed in 1980 by members of Berkeley Chorus Pro Musica. The core group of singers had a history of singing together in the SF Bach Choir and the Presidio Protestant Post Chapel Choir. The decision to strike out on their own came when one of the members was informed that since he joined Pro Musica, there was “too much jocularity in the bass section.” Shortly thereafter they reemerged as The Pacific Mozart Ensemble, rehearsing in the then new Julia Morgan Theater (alternate names for the group included the Morgan Tabernacle Choir).

First Performance: Sunday, June 28, 1980, 5 P.M.--- Julia Morgan Centre for the Performing Arts, College Avenue, Berkeley, suggested donation $3.50. Bach Cantata #106, "Gottes Zeit ist der allerbeste Zeit"; Songs by John Dowland; Mozart "Vesperae Solennes de Confessore" K.339---

Collaborations

PME has a long history with the Berkeley Symphony and Kent Nagano

Kent Nagano

__FORCETOC__Kent George Nagano is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.-Biography:...

. In 2005 Nagano recruited PME to open the Symphony’s season with the Lygeti’s a cappella work Lux Aeterna. Other Berkeley symphony collaborations include Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge, Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Oedipus Rex, San Francisco composer David Sheinfeld's The Earth Is a Sounding Board, Busoni's Doktor Faustus, Olivier Messiaen's St. François d'Asisse, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet. In 2006 members of PME performed the world premier of Kurt Rohde’s oratorio, Bitter Harvest.

In 2003 PME performed the Bernstein Mass with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester under the direction of Kent Nagano

Kent Nagano

__FORCETOC__Kent George Nagano is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.-Biography:...

 at the Berlin Philharmonie. In 2005, the Harmonia Mundi

Harmonia Mundi

Harmonia Mundi is an independent music record label founded in 1958 by Bernard Coutaz in Arles . The Latin phrase means "world harmony"....

 recording of the concert was nominated for a Grammy.

In the 1990s, PME collaborated with Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck

David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...

 on performances of his oratorios, including “Gates of Justice." In 2006 the relationship was renewed when PME commissioned Brubeck to fill in one of the missing movements of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor for their 25th anniversary concert.

They collaborated on numerous occasions with Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk

Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

, most recently traveling to New York in 2005 to participate in the 40th Anniversary Concert in Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 as well as a performance at the World Financial Center Winter Garden, broadcast on WNYC

WNYC

WNYC is a set of call letters shared by a pair of co-owned, non-profit, public radio stations located in New York City.WNYC broadcasts on the AM band at 820 kHz, and WNYC-FM is at 93.9 MHz. Both stations are members of National Public Radio and carry distinct, but similar news/talk programs...

.

In the fall of 2006, members of PME performed with Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came...

 at Zellerbach Hall and John Zorn

John Zorn

John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

 at Hertz Hall in Berkeley, CA.