This project explores seventeenth-century music from Spain, Mexico and South America. The new world cities of Zacateca in Mexico and Potosi in Bolivia developed in the sixteenth century as Spain quested for gold. What was found in greater quantities was silver. By the seventeenth century a fusion of locally composed polyphonic music had entered and altered the church music brought by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century, most notably in the rhythmic addition of villancicos, and its indigenous dance rhythms and poetic forms.

Featuring vibrant baroque music from Mexico, South America and Spain, we showcase the splendour of polyphonic writing that emerged in such musical centres as Mexico City, Zacateca, Cuzco and Potosi where new and old world musical traditions and languages merged in the seventeenth-century.