Ayukîi kôovura karu Uknîi! (tr. Greetings everyone, we begin our journey.)

A kaleidoscope fills a space with colours and shapes, and with each turn we are transported into a different place, yet formed from familiar perspectives. This concert does the same, revealing the diversity of musical thought flourishing across Turtle Island (North America) at the same time as the height of the Baroque era or period in Europe. Much like the shifting patterns, the music in this program reflects the environment, histories, and communities that shaped it. Together, like our kaleidoscope, these parallel worlds invite us to hear not a single musical history, but many histories unfolding at once.

We begin our concert led by Ellis Montes on pipe and tabor, transporting us to the musical practices of Peruvian musicians. This processional leads us to Perú in 1631, where we perform a rendition of Hanacpachap Cussicuinin, originally sung entirely in Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire and one that continues to be spoken today.

Our next turn of the kaleidoscope transports us to Innsbruck in 1695, a place where physical materials were exchanged across cultures, but music was the trade of cultural exchange. Weichlein’s Sonata in A minor exemplifies Stylus Phantasticus, a style particularly known for its energetic, imitative, and improvisatory passages. We can imagine that through this style, musicians explored new forms of expression, using imitation, virtuosity, and spontaneity to capture the freedom and imagination that defined the elements of Baroque performance.

We return to Turtle Island with my arrangement, which follows the story of peoples likely enslaved and brought to Spain. The imitation of the percussion instruments and folk melodies gradually gives way to a Karuk song about the meeting of an unlikely friend in an unlikely place. Speaking of unlikely friends, Pastoreta Ychepe Flauta, a manuscript found in the Musical Archives of Chiquitos, captures Indigenous voices from Bolivia within the staves of a manuscript created within the Jesuit Missions. This manuscript reminds us that Indigenous peoples were not merely subjects of colonial music, but they were the performers, teachers, copyists, and creators of this music. These works transcend time, and with another turn of our kaleidoscope, we find our long-lost friends and the stories that accompany them.

The second half of the program opens with the work of the remarkable eighteenth-century composer, Wilhelmine von Bayreuth. A patron of the arts, intellectual, and accomplished composer, she was among the women whose contributions to Western art music have too often been overlooked. The rediscovery of this sonata is among the growing examples of women’s vibrant and colourful contributions to Western art music, adding another turn to our kaleidoscope.

Our next work was premiered at the Palace of Versailles in 1745. Rameau’s opera Les Fêtes de Ramire represents one of the cultural centres of eighteenth-century Europe, where the acte de ballet embodied spectacle, elegance, and refinement of the French court. The collection of dances performed in this concert offers a glimpse into the French Baroque through its richly ornamented melodies, rhythmic vitality, and expressive relationship between music and movement.

Lastly, our kaleidoscope returns to Perú with a work that is as colourful to the eye as it is to the ear. Lanchas para baylar comes from the Codex Martínez Compañón, an extraordinary manuscript of watercolours depicting the daily life in northern Perú while documenting the region’s music, cultures, and languages. More than a collection of musical works, the codex serves as an ethnographic record of the diverse Indigenous, African, and European communities in northern Perú, including Chimor, Cajamarca, Lambayeque, Huamachuco, and Chachapoyas, all contained in the colonial Diocese of Trujillo.

We end similarly to how we began, with a recessional leading us off stage. Although it may feel familiar, like a kaleidoscope, each aspect of this concert in every turn is different. What you hear today will differ from every rehearsal, reflecting the living nature of Indigenous musics, where variation, relationship, and renewal are integral to the protocols of performance. Although Western art music has often emphasized permanence through notation, our kaleidoscope invites us to further embrace transformation and to find beauty in each turn. Familiar colours may reappear, and certain patterns may evoke memories, but every turn reveals a perspective that has never been seen before as we reimagine these histories, performances, and ways of knowing.

Kupánakanakana (that is all)