Making Baroque Music Sexy

This disk is a real favourite, Missa Mexicana by Andrew Lawrence-King and the Harp Consort. I've already considered a similar disk by Ex Cathedra and other ensembles including Florilegium and Hesperion XXI have investigated this area of baroque music from Spanish America after the conquest of the Conquistadors. The Harp Consort take a scholarly approach as do the others but there is a looser feel to their performances, they swing more and in some cases are just downright sexy. Which is important to the material since the idea was that the church would encourage the local populace into services by including local dance like rhythms in the religious settings. The disk includes the exuberant setting of the mass by Juan Guitierez de Padilla plus secular songs that are the original source material of the dances. The singing style adopted by the Harp Consort is similarly more natural, less obviously in the western choral tradition. Similar to the approach used by groups like L'Arpeggiata to early music. The instrumentation used on the disk includes Mexican baroque guitars, theorbo, gamba, lirone, sackbut, bajon and percussion alongside the Spanish harp, organ and psaltery of Lawrence-King. This disk ideally demonstrates the cross currents of intellectualism and sensuality of the Hispanic baroque.