Dr. Lori Keyne, who came to Panama with her Episcopalian missionary husband three years ago, is winding up an important mission of her own. Soon to move to Roanake, Virginia to become a music professor at Hollins University, Keyne has been conducting the University of Panama's Chamber Orchestra and Choir, but before she goes the group is presenting one last series of performances.

If you want to catch the last show under Keyne's direction, make it to the performance at the San Francisco de Asis Church in the Casco Viejo on the 30th. See the poster above for details.

I caught the group's May 23 performance at the San Francisco de Paula Church in La Chorrera. It's a working class parish that a few minutes before the concert was packed with the faithful for mass, but cleared out for all but a few dozen folks who caught the music.

The group, a 20-member choir backed by two violins, a viola, a cello, a bass and a harpsichord, performed a selection of Jesuit compositions, colonial era Latin American religious music and some works by Panamanian composers.

The show opened with the anonymous "Misa Palatina," a five-movement opus found in a Jesuit archive in Concepcion, Bolivia. Of special note here, and throughout the concert, were the female vocal soloists. Also noteworthy was Moisés Castillo, a male soprano soloist.

The group then performed "Nisi Dominus," another anonymous Jesuit composition, then Spanish composer Juan de Araujo's early 18th century "Fuego de Amor," a more modern arrangement of the anonymous 12th century "Magne Martyr," and Panamanian composers George Colbourne's "Macchio O Lo Kamutule" and Gonzalo Brenes's "Cabanga." Magne Martyr and Macchio were performed a capella, while the last number featured a tambor and the cello, bass and viola being plucked rather than played with bows.

The concert was proof that there is such a thing as excellence at the University of Panama, and that this country's loss will be Hollins Uniersity's gain. This series of performances was partly sponsored by the governments of Spain and the United States, which showed that some of the folks in those circles have some good taste.

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