A Brief History of
Bella Musica

by Julie Humphrey, Bella Musica President

Bella Musica Chorus has been in existence since 1996. We are a non-profit, community chorus, open to all. We sang under the direction of our founder, Arlene Sagan, for many years until her death in 2012. Arlene was described as “a passionate educator and strong believer in music for singers at every level of experience and ability”. With that mission in mind, Bella Musica continued on under the direction of Richard Mix, Larry Marietta and Bobby Chastain.

As happened with many arts organizations, and especially those based on singing(!), Bella closed down in March of 2020 due to COVID-19, just days away from a planned fundraiser and a performance of Mozart’s Requiem.

Choir members stayed connected with periodic ZOOM meetings to say “hi” and perform for each other. As vaccines took hold, we gathered again in person, just to sing together. Over the summer of 2022, we came very close to shutting down entirely; however, we decided to give it one more try and see if we could bring Bella Musica back to life. After a lengthy search, we found Olesia Castuera, who accepted the board’s offer to become Bella Musica’s Artistic Director in Fall, 2022. Soon after, our long-time accompanist, John Walko, announced his departure, but we got lucky once again and found our accompanist, Rebecca Hass.

Bella Musica resumed rehearsals in January of 2023, at our usual rehearsal space, St. Clements Church, in Berkeley. We started with 17 members, including just a single tenor! However, we muscled on. As we began again, we added on one task at a time, to keep ourselves afloat.

Now, in our 6th season post-pandemic, we have grown to 40 members, all excited in the production of interesting, wide-ranging classical music, together.