Sacred & Secular, a musical collective serving as the house ensemble at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Excelsior Springs, has recently released “4 Piano Pieces,” a collection of instrumentals composed by Shawn Roney, Sacred & Secular founder and St. Luke’s music minister. All of the pieces were originally performed, in modified form, as prelude pieces at St. Luke’s, and is available to stream on digital music platforms, such as YouTube Music.
Shawn has pledged to donate 20% of the EP’s profits to the St. Luke’s capital improvement fund, 10% to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and 10% to the Imani Winds Foundation, a non-profit organization established by Imani Winds, a classical music quintet consisting primarily of Black musicians. The donation to the Imani Winds Foundation is in keeping with The Episcopal Church’s mission of pursuing racial reconciliation and its embrace of diversity.
Founded in late 2013 by Shawn and based in the Greater Kansas City area, the Sacred & Secular collective consists of a flexible, rotating lineup, patterned in part after such collectives as the Silk Road Ensemble, The Knights and Postmodern Jukebox. With most recording projects and public programs, the performing lineup ranges from a soloist to a quintet. A trio incarnation is primarily responsible for playing for morning prayer services at St. Luke’s.
The collective plays a mix of sacred music and secular music that makes faith tradition references, such as a 2022 cover of the Bob Dylan-penned “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. And in keeping with its members’ diverse musical backgrounds, the collective performs original and cover material in genres that include chamber music, baroque pop, jazz and Americana.
To see videos of Sacred & Secular performing for services, visit St. Luke’s YouTube channel.
This article was submitted by Shawn Roney, music minister at St. Luke’s and the founder of Sacred & Secular.
