We are witnessing a strange phenomenon in choral music. A subject once taught ubiquitously in high schools, those venerable choirs and glee clubs are nearly extinct in that environment. Yet the institution flourishes on television, and in the real world, some spanking new choral ensemble is announced with surprising regularity. And enterprising young directors somehow find skilled singers to fill them. Go figure.

Krishan Oberoi's Sacra/Profana, one of the newer San Diego vocal collectives, brought three fresh choral offerings to the University of San Diego’s Founders Chapel Sunday (Nov. 13), a program that proved both polished and daring. With composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt heading the fare, predicable minimalist expectations were amply rewarded.

Reich’s “Proverb,” a mystical meditation on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s maxim “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life,” evokes the austere style of late medieval French organum, music rarely experienced outside of Music History lectures. In lieu of a choir, five vocal soloists—three women and two men—play with the text: the high voices spin out long vocal melismas that dance in parallel motion, while the men sustain a mellow drone interrupted by unexpected hocket effects. A pair of vibraphones weaves sparkling ostinatos around the singers: sonic incense wafting into the choir loft.

All of the cognitive communication is sealed in the title of Pärt’s “Sarah Was Ninety Years Old,” an allusion to the Biblical story of improbable conception. The voices sing only the syllable “ah” in sinuous lines of ascetic chant pitted against insistent drum iterations: a massive bass drum coupled with a high pitched drum, deftly executed by Aaron Irwin. As the rhythmic patterns ebbed and flowed with minute changes of intensity and design, tenor soloists Matt Hall and Mark Wischkämper intermittently intoned translucent vocal garlands, suggesting some angelic incantation.

Suddenly, from the chapel’s rear gallery, soprano Suzanne Anderson burst forth with agitated, soaring exclamations accompanied by bristling organ chords that increased in volume and density as her wordless song climaxed the work. Her lovely voice filled the chapel with lustrous, arching volleys. How ironic that the monk-like Pärt should achieve in a spartan sacred motet an astounding dramatic coup that contemporary opera composers cannot craft in a crowd scene roiled with by a convoluted plot.

Oberoi’s programming scoop was Nico Muhly’s 30-minute choral cantata “Expecting the Main Things from You,” based on fragments of text by Walt Whitman. Following acclaim for his score to the popular 2008 film “The Reader,” Muhly has become the poster boy (yes, he is all of 30) for new American music. Earlier this month the “New York Times” touted Muhly in an extensive feature prior to the Nov. 9 premiere of his latest opera “Dark Sisters,” staged and commissioned by the New York City’s Gotham Chamber Opera.

Muhly’s choral writing in this Whitman cantata projects those bright, tightly-voiced harmonies that move in solemn procession, a style that other choral minimalists, e.g. Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre, have cultivated with much success. Although Muhly created many beautiful moments in the three contrasting movements of this recent work, his weak structural continuity struck me as episodic. A work this long needs more of an over-arching concept to maintain momentum.

Sacra/Profana’s 20-voice chorus proved well disciplined and sported a clear, bell-like (if treble-heavy) sonority. I look forward to hearing them again in the adventurous repertory their director favors.

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