Concert: Orfeón San Juan Bautista

Pre-registration for this event is now closed. The box office will open at 6:15 PM on Saturday evening in the gallery of Hispanic Society of America. Please email Martha Cargo at mcargo@as-coa.org with any inquiries.

For ticketholders: Hispanic Society's visitor entrance is located on Audubon Terrace at Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets. Click here for visitor information.

Admission: FREE for Americas Society, YPA, and Hispanic Society of America Members; $20 for non-members. $10 tickets will be available for purchase at the door for students and seniors with ID.

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About the Artists

Founded in 2001, Orfeón San Juan Bautista (OSJB), a professional 42-member mixed voice ensemble, is the most active choral organization in Puerto Rico. Since its foundation, the choir has offered more than a hundred concerts, which regularly include premieres of works by contemporary Puerto Rican composers. Over the last 15 years, the ensemble’s musicality, expressivity, high technical level, as well as the constant quality of its renditions, have established it among the lauded Latin American cultural institutions. OSJB’s diverse repertoire eclipses the sacred and secular of the great European choral traditions from the Middle Ages to the present to include Latin American academic and traditional folkloric music.

In 2009, the choir founded the chamber string orchestra Cuerdas de Orfeo, which serves as the choir’s official accompanying ensemble. The orchestra is composed of professional musicians and advanced students from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. OSJB has produced ten albums, which effectively document a significant portion of the ensemble’s amassed repertoire. Since 2004, GD & E Orfeón San Juan Bautista Corporation has sponsored the radio show “Mayormente a capella” with Radio Universidad de Puerto Rico, focusing on medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and modern choral music, as well as vocal jazz and folkloric music.

In the last decade, OSJB has performed Fauré’s Requiem Mass, conducted by Michael Beck (Settimana di Musica Sacra dal Mondo, Florence); Ernesto Cordero’s Estampas criollas with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, commissioned by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (Luis A. Ferré Fine Arts Centre, San Juan); and Música sacra de las tres Américas (Santo Stefano al Ponte Vecchio, Florence). The ensemble has toured to Ohio, Miami, New York City, Spain, and the Dominican Republic, where they performed at the Basílica Catedral Metropolitana Santa María de la Encarnación, the oldest church in the Western Hemisphere. 

About the program

The program will draw from the OSJB's diverse repertoire, spanning four centuries, including music by Ferdinando di Lasso, Luca Marenzio, Maurice Duruflé, and Anton Bruckner, and popular music from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.