Starting today, a new group of specially trained choral singers will join with Seraphic Fire to record the so-called London version of the “German Requiem” of Johannes Brahms. This version, arranged by Brahms in 1869 for one piano, four hands, as the accompaniment, will also be heard in concert on Saturday evening in Tampa and Sunday afternoon in Fort Lauderdale. It’s the first outing for the Professional Choral Institute, newly created by Seraphic Fire founder Patrick Dupré Quigley and the group’s chorus master James Bass.

Bass, who teaches at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where the institute is based, said the impetus for the new institute came from Seraphic Fire’s collaboration with the Western Michigan University Chorale on a 400th anniversary recording of Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610.” That recording briefly hit the top spot on the iTunes classical charts, a first for Seraphic Fire, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in the coming season.

“It was so successful, we decided we need to try this again,” Bass said.

Further, the institute itself grew out of the conviction that younger classical singers needed a way to be trained for work in the nation’s professional choirs, which have multiplied in the last decade or so.

“Everybody gets trained for the Met,” Bass said, referring to New York’s Metropolitan Opera. “But only one of 10,000 makes the Met. Practically speaking, we need to try to train people to be good vocal ensemble singers.”

Thus, the Institute, based at USF (which made a five-year commitment to the effort and gave it $60,000 in cash and in-kind services, Bass said), and designed for 40 singers. And it’s not just musicianship that’s being taught. After the singing practice, attendees practice marketing.

“We have a resume and headshot evaluation,” he said. “We make it anonymous, but we show some of the resumes and audition material of singers who weren’t accepted … We play different samples, and show them the difference between someone who sat in their bedroom and recorded themselves on a flip-phone, and someone who went into a studio and made a real recording.”

All that matters, he said, and so do other niceties of professional preparation.

“They have to be able to come and be prepared at the very first rehearsal. You’re under contract, you arrive on time,” he said. “There have been singers with Seraphic Fire who were unprepared and they’ve never received another contract. In the arts, time is money.”

The market for good choral singers is competitive, he said, and a musicians’ audition CD needs to reflect the singer’s ability as closely as possible. Bass said he and Quigley found several singers who turned out to be much better in person than their recorded material suggested.

“The word we stress the most at the Professional Choral Institute is ‘flexibility,’” Bass said. “You have to be able to sing without vibrato, with vibrato, as a soloist, in the ensemble … Singers have to have flexible voices to be able to do many things.”

This year, there are 46 singers taking part in the Brahms, with the combined forces of Seraphic Fire and the institute participants, Bass said. The institute will cap its slots at 40 in the future so that, even with Seraphic Fire, the group doesn’t become the size of a symphonic chorus, he said.

The Brahms “German Requiem,” which can be heard at 8 p.m. Saturday at the USF Concert Hall in Tampa and at 6 p.m. Sunday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, makes a powerful impact even without the orchestral coloring, Bass said.

“One of the things he insisted on during his lifetime was the idea that tempos need to fluctuate a lot,” Bass said. “The piano version allows this music to be more like art song than orchestral music … It’s still very rewarding.”

Brahmns’ Requiem Saturday, June 4 at 8 p.m. at USF Concert Hall, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa. And June 5 at 6 p.m. at All Saints Episcopal Church at 333 Tarpon Drive, Fort Lauderdale.