Free lecture, concert to take place next week

Colombian musicologist Egberto Bermudez has joined with the Ensemble Fénix de los Ingenios, a Bloomington-based ensemble specializing in Iberian-American early music, for a series of concerts in Indiana.

The “Christmas Matins: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Music from Latin American Cathedrals” programs will feature a vocal and instrumental colonial Christmas repertoire from several Latin-American cathedrals and countries.

During a period of two weeks, the group will perform in Crawfordsville, Nashville and Indianapolis. There will be two separate performances in Bloomington: Sunday in the John Waldron Arts Center, which is free, and Dec. 12 at the First United Methodist Church.

“The pieces will be sung in Spanish or Portuguese,” Bermudez said. “The songs are quick, melodious and easy to sing. They are meant to be entertaining and funny.”

Bermudez will give a pre-concert lecture for a doctoral choral conducting class Friday in the Music Building Addition in preparation for Sunday’s matinee. He will discuss Latin-American Colonial Music and its sources, as well as its performance practices, Bermudez said.

“Basically, it’s going to be an introduction to the general aspects of Colombian music,” Bermudez said. “The introductory lecture will explain the functions of music at that time in Latin American culture and what kinds of instruments were used.”

Bermudez studied early music performance practice and musicology at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and King’s College, University of London. He is currently a professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas of the National University in Bogota, Colombia, Bermudez said. He has also published a number of works regarding Latin-American and Colombian music history, as well as traditional and popular music and instruments.

In 1984, Bermudez founded Canto, an ensemble that specialized in Spanish and Latin American Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. In 1992, with Juan Luis Restrepo, Bermudez established the Fundacion de Musica, an organization dedicated to distribute research on Latin-American musical past to scholars and the general public.

“Egberto is one of few experts on colonial Latin American music,” said Angelique Zuluaga, artistic co-director for the Ensemble Fénix de los Ingenios. “There aren’t that many experts around. When we decided to do a concert series with that in mind, we immediately thought of him. It was an easy decision.”

Ensemble Fénix de los Ingenios won first prize in the 2003 Competition in the Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America at the university. They have been invited as a guest ensemble by institutions such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Colegio Complutense at Harvard University, Zuluaga said.