Ensemble Caprice to Perform Salsa Baroque, 2/19-21

Next month the Montreal-based Ensemble Capricereturns to the Bay Area for three concerts presented by the San Francisco Early Music Society. The globetrotting, five-member group, praised for its "top-flight" playing will perform a program of music from Latin America and Spain, titled Salsa Baroque. Ensemble Caprice performs at 8:00 pm Friday, February 19 at First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto; at 7:30 pm Saturday,February 20 at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley; and at 4:00 pm Sunday, February21 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Individual tickets from $34 to $40 are available for purchase online at sfems.org.

"During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the musical dialogue between the Old and the New Worlds produced extraordinary results," writes Ensemble Caprice founder and recorder soloist Matthias Maute in a program note. "This fascinating blend of European polyphony and Latin American traditional music created a unique style that is exemplified by the villancicos of the Bolivian composer Juan de Araujo and the colorful guarachas of his contemporaries." Another highlight of the program are sonatas by Falconieri, a European composer who was influenced by this Latin American style.

Joining Maute on stage are Sophie Larivière, on recorder and traverso, David Jacques, on baroque guitar, Susie Napper, on baroque cello, and Ziya Tabassian, on percussion.

Together they will perform a collection of more than two dozen songs and dances, including the very first work of polyphony published in the Americas, Hanacpachap cussicuinin, issued in 1631 in Peru; works by Spanish composers, such as Santiago de Murcia (1673-1739), who traveled in Latin America, and returned home to share his discoveries; and works by other composers who immigrated to the New World in service of a religious order, composers like Antonio de Salazar (c. 1650-1715) who worked as a chapel master in Puebla and Mexico City.

Some of the works set to music the indigenous languages of the people with whom the composers had contact: works such as Xicochi conetzintle by Gaspar Fernandes (c. 1570-1629), a lullaby sung in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. Still other composers distinguished themselves through the use of African rhythms juxtaposed with sections of European counterpoint in works such as theConvidando está la noche by Juan García de Zéspedes (1619-1678). All in all, these works form a picture of a vibrant musical culture in the making.