MP3 Coro Hispano de San Francisco - Ramillete
If "Mexican Baroque" has caught your ear, this wide-ranging anthology of choral music from Mexico, Central and South America is a must; it''s got Latin American Renaissance, Baroque, Classic, Romantic and folk-originate works in a rich array of textures.
19 MP3 Songs
WORLD: World Traditions, CLASSICAL: Traditional
Details:
Ramillete: flowers from field and garden
a garland of choral song from Spain and Latin America
Coro Hispano de San Francisco
Juan Pedro Gaffney R., director
If "Mexican Baroque" has caught your ear, this wide-ranging anthology of choral music from Mexico, Central and South America is a must; it''s got Latin American Renaissance, Baroque, Classic, Romantic and folk-originate works in a rich array of textures, styles and sonorities, from chorus-orchestra down to voice-and-guitar, all performed to the nines by the nation''s premiere ensemble dedicated to this repertory: Coro Hispano de San Francisco. Brilliant vocal solos and on-target instrumental work by some of the West Coast''s leading names in early music combine with foot-stomping Veracruz zapateados and robust, ranchera-style singing in this sampler from a half-dozen different concert programs.
Latin America''s choral music is a little-known treasure that''s been quietly awaiting rediscovery for decades (or centuries- depending on how far back you want to go). Leading the way in its interpretation is the Coro Hispano de San Francisco, which has been exploring and performing this repertory exclusively since its first concert in 1975. On this disc-its third CD release- the nation''s premiere Hispanic chorus turns in an amazingly varied sampling of music for voices and instruments from the cathedrals of Puebla, Lima and Sevilla, the ranchos of Early California, the plazas of Veracruz, all the way to the rain-forest missions of Paraguay and the mountain villages of Nigeria.
1 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS
2 FECIT POTENCIAM
(Magnificat in D )
3 LAUDATE DOMINUM
4 CÁNTICO DEL ALBA
5 GLORIA
6 AGNUS DEI
7 VIRGEN SANCTA
8 ¡PLAZA, PLAZA!
9 LAS MAÑANITAS GUADALUPANAS
10 LOS COFLADES DE LA ESTLEYA
11 KERESIMESI ÒDUN DE O
12 O QUAM SUAVIS
13 DIGAN, DIGAN
14 EL TILINGO-LINGO
15 LA GOLONDRINA
16 CUANDO UNO QUIERE A UNA
17 TE QUIERO PORQUE TE QUIERO
18 CORRIDO de CÉSAR CHÁVEZ
( music & lyrics: José Luis Orozco)
19 ES BUENO DARTE GRACIAS, SEÑOR
19 tracks; total time 77:53. Complete with texts, translations and notes.
Four of the nineteen tracks on this disc are taken from live concerts in diverse venues, the rest from dedicated recording sessions, but all in acoustic settings that allow the natural sound of voices and instruments to bloom without tweeking. Most are works complete in themselves; a few are single movements of larger works, which will be re-released in their entirety in subsequent CDs.
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Because the composers represented on this disc are virtually unknown- at least up here- listeners may care to know something about them and their music.
Track 1 is the opening movement of Francisco Eusebio Delgado''s Te Deum in C, composed in 1825 for solo voices, chorus and orchestra. The next track is taken from another work by Delgado, his Magnificat in D , composed in 1818. Mexico''s greatest composer from the late-Classic-early Romantic, Delgado was born in Mexico City in 1792 (five years before Schubert), where he received his musical formation and pursued his entire career to the end of his days in 1853. Rich in melodic invention and strong in their architecture, these works shine at the hands of soloists Mimi Ruiz, Mark Hernández, Kenneth Fitch and John Kendall Bailey.
track 8: Juan Gutierrez de Padilla''s ¡Plaza, plaza! is a rousing, double-choir villancico first sung on Christmas Eve, 1653, in Puebla Catrhedral. Coro Hispano provided its modern-day re-premiere six years ago. Gutierrez de Padilla (Málaga, 1590-Puebla, 1664), one of the best of Mexico''s Early Baroque, served as maestro /resident composer of Puebla Cathedral for more than thrity years.
track 10: Los Coflades de la Estleya is a call-and-response villancico negrillo, incorporating African elements, both musical and textual, into an ancient Hispanic song-form. Its author, Juan de Araujo, is one of the giants of the South American Baroque. Born in Villafranca in 1644, he emigrated to Lima at the age of 16, where he finished his education and went on to become maestro of the local cathedral, and of Cuzco, Antigua (Panama) and La Plata (present day Sucre, Bolivia) as well, leaving behind a legacy of brilliant polychoral works wherever he went.
track 14: The infectuous rhythm of zapateados in El Tilingo Lingo, a son jarocho from Veracruz, will have you dancing in your chair. Women''s voices provide a scintillating counterpoint to Jesús Guillén''s gutsy delivery of the leadline, and Arwen de Castellanos'' footwork provides the authentic percussion of the dance.
track 15: La Golondrina. Narciso Serradell (Veracruz, 1843-Mexico City, 1910) wrote a lot of gorgeous songs, but none better known or more belived than this one. In this setting for two voices and three guitars, Mimi Ruiz''s glowing soprano soars above the accompanying counterpoint like the legendary bird of the song''s lyrics.
track 18: José Luis Orozco''s Corrido de César Chávez is an irresistibly joyous paean to the charismatic leader of farmworkers and of Chicano civil rights. Yolanda Aranda Coria''s dark contralto, straight out of the Mexican ranchera stradition, captures perfectly the drive of Orozco''s winning melody.
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Founded in 1975 and drawn largely from the Spanish-speaking communities of the Bay Area, Coro Hispano de San Francisco is an ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists dedicated to exploring and performing works from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking World. The group has more than seventy U.S. premiere performances to its credit, many of them 20th-century re-premieres of works by 17th- and 18th-century Latin American composers. Coro has produced three CDs to date, has toured internationally, has performed as featured headliner at choral festivals and has served as Artists-in-Residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Wherever they perform, the group receives standing ovations as a matter of course.
Artistic Director Juan Pedro Gaffney R. is responsible for many of the arrangements in this collection. His handling of melodies from widely diverse styles shows an uncanny ear for capturing the essence of the originals and providing them the larger field of play of solo voices, choral voices and instruments. Last year Gaffney was honored by KQED-TV as Hero of the Barrio.