Musica Sacra San Antonio was formed as a schola cantorum in residence at Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church, San Antonio, in 2010. Noted for its high liturgical standards and carefully selected repertoire of choral music, the choir specializes in music from traditional Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Catholic and Orthodox rites.
Upon the retirement of its founding director, organist and acclaimed conductor Robert Finster in 2016, composer-conductor Owen L. Duggan assumed the musical leadership and helped identify and develop the choir as a sacred-music chamber choir, expanding its repertoire to include sacred masterworks and artistic secular offerings from all periods. Special services and concerts are presented in venues of note around San Antonio, including Sacred Heart Chapel at OLLU, Little Flower Basilica, and Immaculate Conception Chapel at Oblate.
The group averages a membership of approximately 20 experienced choristers.
Dr. Owen Duggan has been with Musica Sacra San Antonio since 2014, joining first as a bass section leader and assistant director under founding director Dr. Robert Finster. In 2016, after Finster stepped down, Duggan was appointed Music Director. He holds additional positions as Choir and Band Director at the San Antonio Academy elementary/middle school, and Music Director at Northwood Presbyterian Church. In addition he is a published composer-arranger of church and choral music, and a nationally recognized singer-songwriter in Americana, folk and children's music. Duggan holds music degrees from McGill University (Montreal), University of North Texas, and University of Texas at Austin, and he has undertaking post-graduate studies in choral-orchestral conducting at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester,
Dr. Robert Finster (1939-2020), organist and music director, formed Musica Sacra San Antonio in 2010. As a choral specialist in music of the eighteenth century, he previously had established the Cantata Singers in Elmira, New York (now in its 50th season), Cathedral Singers in Denver, Colorado, and Texas Bach Choir in San Antonio. For eighteen seasons he was conductor of Ars Musica Chicago. Finster's knowledge of liturgical practice and repertoire in the Russian Orthodox Church distinguished him as a broad-ranging church musician as well as having served on the Episcopal Presiding Bishop's Standing Commission on Church Music.