Indigenous meets Baroque with El Parnaso Hyspano

Rafael Montero

This Saturday, the Little Oratory in Brompton Road, London SW7 2RP, will be welcoming El Parnaso Hyspano, an international chamber group of singers and instrumentalists dedicated to the performance of early Hispanic music, ranging from the medieval to the baroque and early classical. They specialise in music from Latin America, and their repertoire includes music sung in Spanish, Latin, and Indigenous languages such as Quechua, Guarani, and Chiquitano, an extinct language. The one hour concert will be followed by a wine reception.

They have recently given the UK premiere of a number of recently discovered works, including two chamber operas written on the Bolivian Jesuit missions, including one written in an Indigenous Language by an anonymous Indigenous composer. This concert will showcase the breadth of repertoire which they have been sharing with delighted UK audiences since their foundation in 2020. The music is a vivid meeting place of European and Indigenous traditions, combining baroque sensibilities with the rhythmic vitality and folk-influenced melodies of the different peoples who mixed there in colonial times.

The ensemble of two singers and five instrumentalists will perform the Indigenous opera San Francisco, written in the Chiquitano language by an anonymous Indigenous composer in the Jesuit missions of Bolivia. The concert will also include vocal and instrumental items from the 18th Century Peruvian 'Codex Martinez Companon' which collected both sacred and secular music from Peru at that time.

As well as a sonata for two violins by Corelli, the concert will also include a recently discovered cantata for tenor, 'Tu anarda, despides' by the Bolivian composer Manuel Mesa Carrizo (? - 1803) in a performing edition created for the ensemble by the period expert Drew Edward Davies of Northwestern University, Illinois, and performed in 2025 for the first time.

The performers are: Lydia Ward (soprano), Rafael Montero (tenor), Joana Praça and Edmund Taylor (violins), Fabio Fernandes (guitar/theorbo), Pablo Tejedor-Gutierrez (cello) and Johnny F Rodriguez (andean percussion and wind).

Learn more about the ensemble at: www.elparnsasohyspano.com

Divine Encounters: Indigenous meets Baroque by El Parnaso Hyspano takes place on Saturday, 13 September 8 - 9.30pm GMT+1 at the London Oratory - Little Oratory, Brompton Road London SW7 2RP

For tickets see: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/divine-encounters-indigenous-meets-baroque-tickets-1471821751479?