Cascada de Flores September 15, 2006

$12 donation. Doors open at 7:30pm. Show at 8pm.
www.cascadadeflores.com

Cascada de Flores ("waterfall of flowers") is a professional folkloric ensemble dedicated to the exploration, preservation and dissemination of Mexican and Cuban regional music (and dance). Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cascada de Flores features the vocal duet of Arwen Lawrence de Castellanos and Sabra Weber and guitarists Jorge Liceaga and Jorge Mijangos. Coupled with their use of a variety of traditional Mexican and Cuban instruments, the resulting experience is passionate, dynamic and educational. Together they celebrate the diversity of Mexican and Cuban rhythms, song and dance, and excel in the exciting sound of the early 1900s when the two countries' musical companionship first exploded onto the radio waves. Cascada de Flores' muses include the earthiest of duos of the traditional Trova from Cuba: the late Maria Teresa Vera and Lorenzo Hierrezuelo, as well as Los Compadres, Las Hermanas Mendoza of Texas, Toña La Negra of Veracruz and many maestros of Mexican and Cuban Folklore.

In performance, Cascada de Flores unites the sound of Latin America's golden age of song with the traditional music of the countryside using a plethora of instruments: vocal duet, guitars, tres cubano, "guitarjón" (a baritone guitar made out of a cajón by Jorge Mijangos), flute, marimbol (a bass lamellaphone related to the African thumb piano), requinto and jaranas of Veracruz, donkey's jaw bone, zapateado (footwork), and cajón.



"Their way with a love song makes you think of Sinatra, Edith Piaf - the finesse, the phrasing, the charged emotion...One song and you feel as if you're in a smoke-filled café in France, the next one carries you to a small village in the Mexican countryside... They can do sophisticated improvisations with a jazzy charge that makes your whole body vibrate, then turn around and perform a canción about love that brings you close to tears."
Joanne Sheehy Hoover, Music Critic Emeritus,
The Washington Post and Albuquerque Journal

Official Website: http://www.redpoppyarthouse.org/concerts.html