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1992 sparked an abundance of recordings of Latin American choral music, with CDs such as Nueva España: Close Encounters in the New World (Boston Camerata) and Mexican Baroque (Chanticleer), two especially well-known musical commemorations of the encounter between Europe and indigenous America. Many recordings have been made subsequently, some by Latin American artists such as Exaudi (Cuba) or the Coro de Cámara of the University of the Americas in Puebla (Mexico). As for Brazil, which celebrated its encounter in 2000 (Pedro Álvares Cabral sailed into Porto Seguro in 1500), an array of choral CDs are available. Composers such as Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia, mestre de capela of Rio de Janeiro cathedral, and groups such as the Associação de Canto Coral or the Camerata de Rio Janeiro have been represented; an especially interesting CD, Negro Spirituals au Brésil Baroque by the French ensemble XVIII-21 Musique de Lumières, reflects Brazil's mixed-race heritage by featuring compositions by slaves freed either before or after emancipation in 1888.
Sacred choral music of what is now Brazil has been concentrated in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais. (The name means "General Mines" in Portuguese, so called because of the gold and diamond deposits discovered there.) Minas Gerais boasts the highest concentration of colonial baroque churches in the country, many with organs by local builders. Its church music is correspondingly rich. Prints of music by Haydn, Boccherini, early Beethoven, and others testify to a wealth of performance materials, as do the works of several composers, most of whom will likely be unfamiliar to listeners in the...