Lone Piñon and Lenore

Welcome to Domingos en Arte—a summer music and dance series presented by Melaza Music, AMP Concerts, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. After two preview shows in June, the series will run weekly from July 1 to August 19 in the NHCC's charming Fountain Courtyard. We have invited a wide range of Latin artists for family-friendly summer Sundays that will feature live music, drinks and delicious Latin cuisine.

The NHCC’s new restaurant—La Fonda del Bosque—will be offering unique themed dinners before each concert (from 5:30 to 7) and providing a cash bar and tapas throughout the night.

Tickets are $11 in advance, $14 day of show (plus applicable service charges). Admission is free for children 12 and younger; tickets are available online as well as from the NHCC Box Office, in person or by phone at (505) 724-4771.

Lone Piñon is an acoustic conjunto from Northern New Mexico whose music celebrates the diversity and integrity of their region's cultural roots. Using violins, accordion, quinta huapangera, bajo sexto, guitarrón, tololoche and vocals in Spanish, English, Nahuatl, and P'urépecha, the group has revived and updated the Chicano string band style that once flourished in New Mexico, bringing a devoted musicianship to Northern New Mexican polkas and chotes, virtuosic Mexican huapango and son calentano, and classic borderlands conjunto.

New Mexico has long been a crossroads not only of cultures, but of eras—a place where ancient ways of being exist alongside modern life. The oldest strands of New Mexican traditional music began to become scarce in the 1950s when New Mexico was rapidly and at times forcibly integrated into the American economic and cultural environment. But testaments and bridges to this older world have remained in recordings, photos, and most importantly in the living memory of elders.  The musicians of Lone Piñon—Noah Martinez, Jordan Wax, and Leticia Gonzales—were all lucky enough to be initiated early in their musical path into the traditions of elder musicians, who instilled in them a respect for continuity and an example of the radicalism, creativity, and cross-cultural solidarity that has always been necessary for musical traditions to adapt and thrive in each generation. In 2014, they formed Lone Piñon in an effort to find and strengthen the oldest strands of New Mexico string music, sounds that had all but disappeared from daily life. Through relationship with elders, study of field recordings, and connections to parallel traditional music and dance revitalization movements in the US and Mexico, they have brought the language of New Mexico traditional music and related regional traditions back onto the modern stage, back onto dance floors, and back into the ears of a young generation. 

Growing up in New Mexico, Lenore Armijo was exposed to a unique blend of music including jazz, ranchera and classical. Her own style has propelled her career onto various stages around New Mexico, and more recently in films such as "Descansos" and "Letters to Our Daughters." Her recent appearances on stage include the live New Mexico Tour of "Bless Me Ultima," written by Rudolfo Anaya, and "Living Purgatory," written by Patricia Crespin.

New Mexico Culture Squared (NMC²) is a NM Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) project to build and manage partnerships between DCA institutions and cultural organizations that will enhance the impact, effectiveness, attendance, and visitor experience of exhibits and programs of DCA entities. Under the management of AMP Concerts, NMC² will create programs in collaboration with State Historic Sites, DCA Museums and various cultural organizations with the goal of increasing public programs statewide and promoting New Mexico as a destination for arts and culture.