Customer Reviews

Ramillete: A Garland Of Choral Songs

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... and a Community Joy!

Coro Hispano de San Francisco is unabashedly a community chorus based in the predominantly hispanic Mission District of San Francisco. There are some professional and semi-professional musicians who join forces with the Coro for their most publicized concerts, and the core of the group - Conjunto Nuevo Mundo - includes several very artful musicians. The Coro has been serving - yes, that's the word, serving! - the Bay Area with music from at least three decades, under the leadership of Stanford-trained musicologist/composer Juan Pedro Gaffney. They perform in the old Dolores Mission and the Cathedral of San Francisco and of some of the less-anglophone agricultural communities around the Bay Area, often in conjunction with Day of the Dead, Cinco de Mayo, and other Latin American festivals. Their repertoire includes 16th C Spanish polyphony, works by contemporary Latin American composers, and the unique repertory of compositions found in the archives of Spanish Colonial churches in Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Some of the latter are texted in 'Native American' languages. They are, of course, miserably underfunded, yet they persist.

"Ramillete" is not as polished a performance as most of those I review, but it brims with exuberance and folkloric charm. If I could buy enough copies, or persuade enough people to give it a listen, to make it a 'best seller', I'd be thrilled to feel 'of service' to this generous-spirited organization.