American Popular Song

Since founding L'Arpeggiata in 2000 as an early music ensemble, Christina Pluhar has taken it in some directions not usually associated with the rarified world of historically informed performance practice, particularly into the traditions of Southern European folk music and jazz. In Los Pájaros Perdidos: The South American Project, she ventures even further afield into the world of modern Latin American popular song and folk song. She argues persuasively that the Renaissance and Baroque instruments the Spanish introduced to the New World in the 16th and 17th century remained essentially the same, while back in Europe they developed in entirely new directions so that the difference between the sound of an early music ensemble and a popular South American instrumental group is less significant than one might expect.

In May of 2007 the Library of Congress gathered an unprecedented group of musicians together in Washington, D.C., to honor Paul Simon as the first recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.