John Warren is the Museum Curator of Mission San Miguel. He also serves as a musicologist and director of the San Luis Obispo Early Music Consortium. The San Luis Obispo Early Music Consortium encompasses the Baroque and Early Classical eras, and to incorporate little known New World treasures into a rich repertoire of the Old World masters. Warren feels a special quest as a Californian to give early music a local relevance by researching and presenting music from California’s Spanish Colonial period.

Music from all parts of the New World is an integral part of every Californian’s heritage. Warren is determined to uplift the great composers of Early Colonial California from their ill-deserved obscurity into the bright daylight of frequent performance. The New World Baroque Orchestra brings the joys and treasure of the Baroque Era in Early California— a time when grace and refinement were paramount— to today’s audiences.

By recreating the grace and refinement of the past, the Consort honors and renews these virtues for the present and the future, therefore providing artistic growth throughout the community. And furthermore, future generations can grow to treasure early music not as a museum piece, but as a living art.

[Adapted from http://www.newworldbaroque.org/orchestra.html]