Música Mestiza

The members of the ClarOscuro vocal ensemble, who all come from different countries and have different musical backgrounds, were brought together by the joy of singing and making music together. They have the same mother tongue – Spanish – and come from similar socio-cultural contexts with the associated ways of thinking and acting, so they had similar experiences of arriving in everyday life in Germany. These experiences were always the starting point for conversations and discussions, from which the theme of the group's first programme finally emerged: "Música mestiza - encounter of the old and new world", which is a mixture of the music of the original Latin American population with the music of the Spanish and Portuguese immigrants and conquerors.

The concert begins with the »Renacimiento« (literally translated as »rebirth«). This refers to the moment when the first signs of cultural exchange became recognisable in the works of Spanish composers. In the following 200 years, especially during the Baroque period, many pieces were composed in the »new world«. Composers such as Gaspar Fernándes (Mexico 1566–1629), Juan de Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco (Perú 1644–1728) or Juan García de Zéspedes (Cuba 1619–1678) left behind a large repertoire of works in which rhythmic and musical influences from all three continents - America, Africa and Europe - are interwoven. The selected pieces from this period show this first drift very clearly.
As the programme progresses, more and more songs from the current popular repertoire are heard, in which it becomes clear what a great influence these first musical works have on the music that we perceive today as Latin American sounds. The early works are clearly the foundation of this music.

For further information on our opera production COLUMBUS click here.