Masterworks Chorale

Beloved ensemble founded at CSM launches its 59^th season

“Attending local arts events is a form of activism, like buying local food. Resources are only there if they’re supported by participation and attendance.”
– Erin Renfroe, Masterworks Chorale executive director

Masterworks Chorale, a beloved musical institution founded in 1964 at College of San Mateo, enters its 59^th season with hope and strength. Though Masterworks has been independent of CSM for roughly 15 years, it shares the College’s deep roots in the community and its values of inclusion, excellence and a future-focused gaze.

Dr. Bryan Baker, Masterworks’ artistic director since 2002, leads his 100 singers in the canonical choral repertoire as well as work by contemporary composers and underperformed composers of color, performing eight concerts a year.

Masterworks has sung at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, in China and on at least seven European concert tours. It is known for its warmth of tone, its technical excellence, and its commitment to the local community. As one of the Peninsula’s oldest arts groups, Masterworks feels a responsibility not just to make its music accessible but also to actively create artistic community by partnering with other arts groups and performing at a range of local venues—from senior centers to concert halls. Select members form a chamber chorale, Serenade, that plays smaller venues and can be hired for private events.

“Attending local arts events is a form of activism, like buying local food,” said Erin Renfroe, Masterworks’ executive director and a soprano with the group since 2015. “Resources are only there if they’re supported by participation and attendance.”

In Masterworks’ youth, its support came first from CSM. The group was founded soon after College Heights’ opening by Galen Marshall (1934-2014), a CSM professor of music. Marshall led a robust choral program on campus, and he wanted local adults to have the same chance to sing great works. He announced the new ensemble as the “College-Community Chorus of the College of San Mateo.” Former high school and college singers flocked to join. At its height in the late 1970s, the chorale had 185 singers.

Its current name was suggested by Andrea Julian, a soprano from Menlo Park who joined in 1969.

“I did some flipping through records to see what other chorales were called,” said Julian, who retired in 2019 after 50 years. “There was a Masterworks in New Jersey, and that sounded nice.”

For years, the Bay Area’s Masterworks was able to put on free concerts with full orchestras thanks to Musicians Local 6, which incentivized its members’ playing pro bono local events, and to San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellows, emerging artists seeking performance experience. 

Masterworks racked up an impressive roster of soloists, including future opera stars Patricia Racette, Sondra Radvanovsky, John Relyea, Ruth Ann Swenson, Stuart Skelton, Luana DeVol and Deborah Voigt, who sang Verdi’s Requiem with Masterworks at Carnegie Hall in 1989.

Big changes followed the passage in 1978 of state Proposition 13, which by capping property taxes devastated public education and forced CSM to reorder its priorities.

In 1979, CSM threatened the end of Masterworks as a one-unit credit course and canceled its fall concert. Members and their friends quickly rallied, raising $11,000 to restore the 1979-80 concert season. Course credit for Masterworks remained an option until 2005-06, and the ensemble retained CSM administrative support and rehearsal space roughly until then.