A ‘tasting menu’ of the old New World

It’s been a long time coming, but at last, a large body of music composed in the Spanish New World from the 16th to the 19th centuries is reemerging.

Although this music isn’t absolutely rooted here -- much of it comes from composers born in Europe who migrated to North and South America -- it is homegrown, and some of it sounds as if it could have been written only in Latin America. If we hear this stuff at all, it usually comes in brief spurts: albums such as the Harp Consort’s fascinating “Missa Mexicana” on Harmonia Mundi or when the Los Angeles Master Chorale dabbles with it around Christmastime.

Yet Sunday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Master Chorale’s ever-eager music director, Grant Gershon, took on a whole program -- “a tasting menu,” in his words -- of this music. Over the course of the evening, the audience was introduced to a plethora of such hitherto-forgotten composers as Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, Juan de Araujo, Gaspar Fernandes, Ignacio de Jerusalem and, closest to home, Juan Bautista Sancho, who worked in California in the early 1800s and was represented by tiny, lyrical Mass excerpts.

By far the most exciting pieces were those emphasizing rhythm -- that critical element ignored or pooh-poohed by Eurocentrics, often to this day. The original percussion parts for these pieces were either lost, briefly sketched or, more likely, implied.

But Gershon’s inspired solution was to bring in the splendid Peruvian percussionist Alex Acuna (formerly of the jazz-rock band Weather Report) to improvise rhythm parts.

With Acuna’s soft touch resonating sharply, De Araujo’s marvelously syncopated “Los Coflades de la Estleya” and Fernandes’ “Dame Albricia Mano Anton” swung through the hall, creating a new category somewhere between early and world music. Too bad there wasn’t more room for Acuna on the program, for he was gone in the second half.

The most substantial work sampled was De Jerusalem’s “Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe,” with excerpts including an eclectic, nearly 20-minute “Te Deum” that veered from Handelian brass fanfares to florid solo vocal writing to a cappella chant.

Here and elsewhere, Gershon had the expert help of the early music group Musica Angelica in configurations of four to 20 musicians, with musicologist Craig Russell (who helped curate the program) on guitar.

If the caliber of this music was any indication of what’s out there, then let there be more tasting menus, maybe even a full-course meal. And it’s doubtful that the original listeners in the missions ever heard these pieces sung as richly and lusciously as they were in this 21st century concert hall.