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Music is one of the languages of culture, and culture itself is a product of the historical movements of peoples -- through war, exile, immigration, and trade. A concert titled "A Convergence of Musical Cultures" will celebrate 17th-century music from the Old and New Worlds to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River; it will be performed on March 21 in New Brunswick and March 22 in Perth Amboy.

The concert will reach into the similar musical cultures of Amsterdam, New Amsterdam, and Spain in counterpoint with Sephardic music, the music of New Spain, and the world premiere of "Exile," a piece by artistic director and conductor Lynn Gumert.

The second concert will take place in Perth Amboy, the Central Jersey city with the largest Hispanic population, fulfilling one of the performers' goals -- increasing understanding and appreciation of Hispanic musical arts and culture among both Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations. Both concerts speak to a second goal -- enhancing public awareness of the riches and beauties of early music.

The five musical cultures honored in the concert have strong historical connections.

In Holland, the wealthy bourgeois involved in banking and shipping had disposable income they could use to support an artistic community, which included musicians. Furthermore, they were able to buy lutes, harpsichords, cabinet organs, and violas de gamba for their homes. "Part of the pursuit of refinement was the ability to speak, write, dance, and play musical instruments well as part of convivial and salubrious company," said John Burkhalter, a consultant for the concert.

In Spain the patrons of music tended to be the church, the monarchy, and the nobility who were active patrons of musicians and composers.

Seventeenth-century Spain and the Netherlands were connected both politically and commercially. Spain still controlled the southern part of the Netherlands, although the north had become independent in the 16th century.

The largely bourgeois audiences in Holland, Spain, and New Amsterdam listened to music that was quite similar. For those in the colonies who could afford it, printed music was readily available from publishing houses in the Low Countries -- the average sailing time across the Atlantic being just seven to nine weeks.

The Sephardic community formed a web of commercial connections between Spain, the Netherlands, and their American colonies. The Sephardim who had moved to Portugal after the expulsion from Spain were forced again with the choice of exile or conversion in Portugal in 1497. The Inquisition followed in Portugal, and many Sephardim moved to Amsterdam, where they would be free to follow their own religion. Sephardic merchants established trade networks between Holland, Spain, and the American colonies.

In the upcoming concert, Lynn Gumert, artistic director, decided to interweave Sephardic music into the Dutch Netherlands section both for musical contrast and as a bow to the influential Sephardic communities of that period.

Gumert first became aware of Sephardic music about 25 years ago, through her Jewish stepfather. She quickly realized that the minor scales she had been using instinctively in her own music were also the foundation of Sephardic music. "I immediately fell in love with it," she said. "The language just felt like home to me."

About eight years ago, after having performed folk music for two decades with her Costa Rican husband and also performed early music, Gumert was asked to put together arrangements of early Spanish music and Latin American art music. At the same time she had formed her own group, Zorzal.

She was particularly drawn to the art music, which was then being rediscovered. "It was very ethnically interesting," she said, "with different rhythms and types of harmonies than European music. It draws on African and Native American rhythms, and it dovetailed with the Latin American folk music I had been performing with my husband."

This music was composed, said Gumert, as a way of drawing people from different cultures into the church. The Latin American church, she explained, was distinctive in maintaining a respect for native culture even as it tried to assimilate the locals into the church. She contrasted this sharply with the North American conquest where, she said, "native American culture was totally looked down on."

Gumert believes the tolerance of the church in Latin America reached back to the period in Spain from the 9th to 11th centuries when Jewish, Christian, and Arab cultures coexisted. Although the relationship was not always harmonious, she said, the shared intellectual growth was reflected in literature and music.

"We find a contradiction in Spanish culture in the kind of openness that came from that historical experience and yet also the kind of nationalistic prejudices that led to things like the Inquisition," she said. "They brought that same dichotomy to the New World, on one hand, trying to convert people, but they had missionaries writing dictionaries in native languages because they wanted to rescue them."

Gumert did not work herself on Sephardic music until about eight years ago when she created arrangements of Sephardic music for a women's chorus. At about the same time, she founded Zorzal and then two years later she arranged Sephardic music for Zorzal. The Sephardic music in the upcoming concerts will be primarily vocal music with accompaniment by early instruments.

A composition by Gumert will bring together the concert's themes of exile, immigration and displacement by setting three Latin American texts to music. The first text is by the Mexican Sephardic poet Homero Aridjis, and the verse she sets to music is about the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The second, a 16th-century Nahuatl text from post-conquest Mexico, asks the questions "What will we do now? They have taken away our culture -- now how will we live?" The third, by 18th-century poet Rosalia de Castro from the Galician region of Spain, came out of a period of great economic difficulty and displacement.

As new economic, religious, and political alignments continue to mix the cultural brew, the upcoming concerts in New Brunwick and Perth Amboy will celebrate the cultural ferments of the early Baroque era and reach out to the multiplicity of cultures today in central New Jersey.

The concert's five sections will run about 80 minutes plus an intermission. They will take place Saturday, March 21, 7:30 p.m., at the United Methodist Church on George Street and Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick, and Sunday, March 22, 4 p.m., at Congregation Beth Mordecai, 224 High Street, in Perth Amboy.

Performers include Musica Dolce, the Highland Park Recorder Society, Zorzal, and John Burkhalter. Cost: $15; $10 for seniors and students; free for the disabled, veterans, and children under 12. To order in advance and save $2 per ticket, send a check by March 14 indicating the number of tickets needed, to HPRS, 431 Lincoln Avenue, Highland Park, N.J. 08904. For more information, contact the Highland Park Recorder Society at (732) 828-7421 or recorderdonna@hotmail.com or visit www.hprecorder.org.