Giacomo Facco (1676–1753), born near Venice, was active in southern Italy as violinist, choirmaster and teacher before his appointment to the Spanish royal court around 1720. Although highly esteemed in his own time, particularly as a composer of operas, Facco had disappeared from musical history until a set of his twelve Pensieri Adriarmonici – concertos for three violins, viola and cello – were discovered by chance in a Mexican library in 1962.

It took years of musical detective work by the musicologist Uberto Zanolli to piece together Facco’s life from the surviving documents – a story told by his daughter in the booklet. Bright and buoyant, the Pensieri Adriarmonici – the title possibly alluding to Venice or Balkan folk music – have much in common with the music of Vivaldi, Albinoni, Marcello and Facco’s other Venetian contemporaries.

These performances by the Mexican Baroque Orchestra – on the first volume of the first-ever complete recording of the Pensieri Adriarmonici – feature a Mexican approach to the basso continuo, played here on guitarrón and vihuela.

Manuel Zogbi, born in Mexico, studied violin in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he gave his first concerts at the age of eleven. He has played concerts all over of Mexico and in various cities in America and Europe. In 2009, after winning through a series of internet auditions undertaken by musicians all over the world, he made his debut in Carnegie Hall, New York as principal violin (concertino) of the ‘YouTube Symphony Orchestra’ under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas and Tan Dun.

Miguel Lawrence, born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1963, became Associate of Guildhall School of Music and Drama with distinction in 1983, studying Baroque flute with Stephen Preston and recorder with Philip Pickett. In 1984 he returned to Mexico where he joined the chamber orchestra Solistas de Mexico conducted by Eduardo Mata whose sudden death in 1993 caused the dissolution of the orchestra. Since then, Miguel Lawrence has pursued a career also as conductor. He has performed in Mexico, England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Spain and the USA. In 2010 he formed the Mexican Baroque Orchestra in order to perform the music of Giacomo Facco.