Over two and a quarter centuries ago, an eclectic group of padres, soldiers, adventurers and colonists and their families led by Juan Bautista Anza, burst upon the California Central Coast. The local Chumash and Salinan Aboriginal Americans, alongside the Spanish Padres (initiated by Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the twenty-one Spanish Missions) who traveled into this new area, toiled the ground and built the historic Central Coast Missions, celebrating their triumphs and mourning their losses through song and dance. Over time, those settlers and their descendants would become famed for both their lively dance parties and their sacred music.
As more waves of settlers arrived bringing new customs and music with them, over time the original local music and dance fell into obscurity. Now through years of research, Director and Musicologist John Warren and his New World Baroque Orchestra, bring that original music and dance back to life through a vivid, lively, and accurately performed reenactment of the music, dance, costume and pageantry of an Early Colonial California festival.
