Coro Hispano brings Latin missionary music to Fallbrook

By JOEL D. AMOS - For the North County Times | Wednesday, April 9, 2008 1:17 PM PDT ∞

The vocal and instrumental ensemble Coro Hispano de San Francisco was established in 1976 to mark a bicentennial. Not for the United States' birthday, but for the 200th anniversary of the settling of its namesake city.

Coro Hispano arrives at the Bob Burton Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Fallbrook Music Society's series. The ensemble's Sunday concert is courtesy of a grant from the California Arts Council and plays into the forte of the group's director, Juan Pedro Gaffney ---- chronicling the music of the missions across the state as well as Latin music from Spain to South America of that era.

"We've been doing these repertories of sacred music for 32 years," Gaffney said. "It was our pleasure to be asked by the Arts Council to undertake a cultural program tour specifically of California mission music."

The state organization knew it was asking the right ensemble to chronicle and perform a piece of California music history. The Bay Area group is both choral and orchestral. Coro Hispano brings a culture's musical legacy to life ---- one that is specific to a period of state history that provided the framework for population explosion. Gaffney has made the chronicling and performing of music of this era his life's passion. He also serves as the director of Hispanic Liturgy at the Basilica of Mission San Francisco de Asis.

Coro Hispano's Fallbrook performance program is divided in two, with three of the major works all commissioned creations of Mexican composers for use in churches across the country.

"It gives it thematic unity," Gaffney said of his program.

The concert begins with the sacred music that missionaries brought from their homelands to the California Missions during the mid-18th through early 19th centuries. The second half of the program brings in a more secular songbook: dance and love songs from California's beginnings.

"The dance music of early California is also old hat to us."

Look for a common thread through the Fallbrook Music Series concert on Sunday.

"There is a unity of cosmic vision and purpose when you are speaking about the sacred music," Gaffney said. "The expressions of faith that the Franciscans brought with them to evangelize the first peoples, natives in California ---- we all know enough history to know that was a thorny road that was not sweetness and light."

Gaffney said he believes that the missionaries had the best of intentions, and many were anthropologically astute.

"They understood some aspects of the problems of acculturation and imposition of another culture on an already existing one. But they were all firmly convinced hearing the Christian faith was strictly for the good of the native peoples here," he said. "It was a work of enlightenment. Looking back on it, you see it was at best a trade-off. Indian way of life was undone by the arrival of the missioners."

Gaffney said descendants of the native peoples of California who lived to see the state joining the Union always spoke affectionately about the songs of the mission era.

"These survivors talked about mission life with fervor, animation and palpable joy when they talk about music. Music was one of the best things the padres shared with the indigenous peoples."

Gaffney is also an archivist, teacher, composer, performer and a self-admitted always-learning student. Creating the program for Coro Hispano's cultural tour was pure bliss.

"Any music I do is a passionate experience," he said. "But I have to confess ---- I don't do music that doesn't turn me on. If it doesn't thrill me, how can I be the vehicle, the medium, for thrilling others?" he asked and laughed.

"I share that enthusiasm, that passion with the singers and instrumentalists who work with me. It's a shared passion that we bring to every performance. You know what? It works. Our audiences, they jump up in applause at the end of a concert ---- over and over again. If we don't get a standing ovation, I have to ask, 'What went wrong?' It's our norm, not an exception."

It has been a rewarding path for three decades.

"It wasn't always standing ovations for us. This has been growing. We have just become more and more focused on the sound of the ensemble," Gaffney said.

At the same time, the director said that Coro Hispano is still at its root a community outreach program.

"We are always offering music-making opportunities to those who otherwise would not have those opportunities," Gaffney said, "particularly in the Spanish-speaking community."

Coro Hispano de San Francisco

Where: Bob Burton Center for the Performing Arts, 2400 Stage Coach Lane, Fallbrook

When: 7:30 p.m. April 13

Tickets: $25, general; $10, children 12 and under

Info: (760) 451-8644 or fallbrookmusicsociety.org

Web: corohispano.org

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