Spoils of Conquest: Crescendo Performs Latin American Choral Music (1600–2010), Saturday, April 17, 2010, First Congregational Church, Great Barrington, MA, by Seth Lachterman

Latin American Baroque music by Juan Pérez de Bocanegra (c.1598–1631), Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c.1590–1664), Gaspar Fernandes (c.1570–1629), Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco Sánchez (1644–1728), Juan de Araujo (1646–1712)

Latin American contemporary music by Javier Farías (b.1973), Raimundo Penaforte, Domingo Santa Cruz (1899–1987), Juan Orrego-Salas (b.1919), Christine Gevert (b.1964), Ariel Ramírez (1921–2010)


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An Indian Learning to Paint in the European Style, 1540

The Crescendo Choir and Vocal Ensemble
Christine Gevert, 

Conductor

Christine Gevert, the indefatigable choral conductor, early music specialist, harpsichordist, and composer, consistently makes her mark in producing unusual and meticulously prepared theme-centric vocal concerts. In the past, we’ve heard rarities of the Mendelssohns (Felix and Fannie), a U.S. premiere of Telemann’s impressive oratorio the 

Hamburische Kapitänsmusik
, and tonight, an exotic syncretism of indigenous Latin America culture and seventeenth-century western European Christianity. Acculturation and assimilation, in the wake of Spanish and Portuguese conquests, created a body of “New World” Baroque music which, while clearly bearing the harmonic, melodic, and formal structures of the invading culture, is, nevertheless, redolent of the tropics and Indian musical elements.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller