Alkymia: the Memory of Spanish Baroque in Bolivia

With its programme Sucreries, the ensemble Alkymia, conducted by Mariana Delgadillo-Espinoza, delves into the baroque treasures of the New World, where memory, dance and mixed heritages intertwine.

Mariana Delgadillo Espinoza © Lionel Audinet

Choir director and founder of the ensemble Alkymia, Mariana Delgadillo Espinoza has been exploring for over a decade the links between early music, popular traditions and contemporary creation. With Sucreries (Y Se Va la Segunda!), recorded on Oktav Records and released in March 2025, she shines a light on the baroque treasures preserved in the archives of Sucre, Bolivia, revealing a heritage of striking vitality. An encounter at the crossroads of projects.

Could you tell us about your background?

Mariana Delgadillo Espinoza: I was born in Bolivia. At seven, I began dancing, often traditional dances at village festivals. Later, I studied piano and guitar through high school. I then won a scholarship to continue piano in Havana. When I came to France, I discovered choral conducting at the Conservatoire in Lyon and immersed myself in early music. It was love at first sight!

Alkymia, which you founded in 2014, takes an unusual approach: you perform both contemporary and popular music on period instruments. Where did that idea come from?

M. D. E.: It began with a simple observation: the audience for early music is growing, while contemporary music reaches far fewer listeners. With Alkymia, we thought we could use the “early music” label as a gateway to explore contemporary repertoires that are rarely heard. It’s a way of rediscovering the old while introducing the new. But we’re not aiming for a specifically “contemporary” aesthetic.

So what are you aiming for?

M. D. E.: For example, I think of one of our projects based on three commissions for three different composers: Daniel Alvarado, Sirah Martinez, and Bertrand Plé. We asked them to work respectively on medieval, Renaissance, and seventeenth-century music, with guidelines specifying what we found most compelling in each repertoire. I knew that for Bertrand Plé, who worked on the Baroque, the rhetoric of the word was crucial. For Sirah Martinez, who approached Renaissance-style music, counterpoint was central. It’s within this half-research, half-experiment framework that we feel most inspired to perform early music while letting it interact with a contemporary repertoire.