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Cirque Musica Holiday Wonderland is a must-see holiday event to usher in the magic of the season. Igniting joy and wonder to your theater like never before, Wonderland is an all-new musical journey that will transport audiences to a magical land far away for a fun-filled holiday-themed show experience they will never forget.
All of us at Albany Pro Musica are concerned about the health and well-being of people in our community and around the world as we face the unprecedented challenges of the coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak. In order to ensure that our singers and audience members stay safe, our 2020-21 season will be entirely virtual, with an exciting series of musical offerings that will be available free. Check back soon for a full schedule of events!
Musica Sacra, Latin for "sacred music," Chorus and Orchestra performs sacred choral masterworks. It is the ensemble-in-residence at Rockhurst University, presented under the auspices of The Center for Arts and Letters and led by musical director and conductor Dr. Timothy L. McDonald. The fall 2023 and spring 2024 performances will take place in person in Arrupe Hall auditorium.
Cirque Musica Holiday Wonderland is an unforgettable musical journey for the entire family to enjoy a world-class circus experience infused with the holiday classics we all love. Treat your family and create memories you will cherish forever at Cirque Musica Holiday Wonderland!
Through the process of urbanization, and due to increasing pressures to adapt to the dominant society, Tejanos incorporated aspects of Anglo-American culture, but they resisted becoming a totally colonized and absorbed people. They maintained a regional Texas-Mexican culture that is reflected in their musical styles. Little is known about the beginnings of música Tejana. As settlement expeditions emanated from central Mexico in the 1700s and 1800s, Spanish, Creole, and mestizo soldiers and settlers brought their music and dances to the Texas frontier. There are many paintings and diary accounts of fandangos or dances held in San Antonio and South Texas through the 1800s, but they give little description of the sound of the music besides calling it "Spanish" or "Mexican." Small bands were composed of available local musicians who used whatever instruments were at hand. Violins and pitos (wind instruments of various types) usually provided the melody, and a guitar the accompaniment.
Historical information from the latter part of the century shows, however, that by the middle to late 1800s, Tejano musicians were playing Spanish and Mexican dance music less and were adopting a new European style that was trickling in from central Mexico. In the 1860s Maximilian, backed by his French army, ruled Mexico. In his court in Mexico City, and in garrisons throughout the country, the European salon music and dances of the time, such as the polka, waltz, mazurka, and schottische, were popular. These styles, disseminated from France, were taken up by the Mexican people in various parts of the country, but nowhere were they more enthusiastically embraced than in South Texas by the Tejanos. South Texas musical culture was similarly influenced by Germans who began immigrating to South and Central Texas in the 1840s. These German Texans also favored European salon music and dances. At times they would hire local Tejano musicians to play for their own celebrations. By the late 1800s, informal Tejano bands of violins, pitos, and guitars were almost exclusively playing European salon music for local dances. But taking root in this frontier area, far from its European and Central Mexican source, this music was being thoroughly adapted to the Tejano taste. At the turn of the century the locally performed polkas, waltzes, and schottisches could truly be called Tejano or "Tex-Mex" rather than European.
One of the most unusual styles of música Tejana to begin its development at that time is música norteña (music of the north), or "conjunto music," as it is often called. (Conjunto literally means "a musical group.") Música norteña embodied traits of Tejano music but also arose with the appearance of a relatively new instrument that was rapidly becoming popular among Tejanos on the farms and ranchos of South Texas. As a result, in the 1900s música norteña has become identified with the sound of the German diatonic button accordion. This instrument may have been brought and popularized by the Germans and Bohemians settling in Central Texas or by the Germans working in the mining and brewing industries in northern Mexico. Newspaper accounts show that by 1898 Tejanos in rural areas of the South Texas chaparral were playing their Texas-Mexican polkas, waltzes, schottisches, mazurkas, and redowas on a one-row, one-key accordion.