Music of the Americas

Music of the Americas Americas Society | 680 Park Avenue (at 68th Street), New York, NY | as-coa.org/music

The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series, recipient of the 2014 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, fulfills an essential part of the cultural mission of Americas Society, annually showcasing dozens of talented artists hailing from across the hemisphere. Presented year-round, the concerts include a wealth of diverse music and performers, ranging from contemporary classi

cal to folk-roots to reggae and jazz. The primary venue for the series is Americas Society’s own Salon Simón Bolivar, an expansive room in the organization’s neo-federal-style headquarters with wide windows, a 15-foot ceiling, and silk fabric walls. Music of the Americas has collaborated with other presenters, including Lincoln Center Out of Doors and the National Museum of the American Indian, and has also presented artists at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall and the Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space. Music of the Americas seeks to further Americas Society’s mission by engaging artists and concertgoers alike in meaningful dialogue through a shared love of excellent music. The series aims to present artists that are both superb musicians in their own right and cultural ambassadors of myriad social and musical traditions, creating a vibrant space and a unique opportunity to hear distinctive and significant music.

05/27/2026

🇵🇦 Paisaxe Ensamble is back with an arrangement by Andrés Carrizo of "Cantan las cigarras" ("The Cicadas Sing"), a piece included in the collection Las Tonadas del Trópico Niño, published by Panamanian composer and musicologist Gonzalo Brenes in 1955. The project started in 1936 as an educational and research initiative, and the seventy songs included in the publication have become extemely popular in the country's schools and have been recorded by several Panamanian musicians. "Cantan las cigarras" is set to lyrics by Fernando Luján.

Paisaxe Ensamble features countertenor Fernando Bustos, clarinetist Alexis Fong, violinist Oryana Racines, violist José Pabuence, cellist Yumiko Tokumoto, bassist Mar Alzamora, and guitarist Víctor Villarreal.

05/26/2026

🇵🇦 From Panama City, with Anthony Vega and Mauro Toribio, reggae artist Kandall sent us this version of "Tu primer amor" ("Your First Love"), a song that tells the story of a love from long ago that remains present in spite of attempts to forget it.

05/22/2026

🎛️ This is the first of two videos Anésio Neto sent us from The Drone Sessions pt. 2, a series of drone ambient compositions constructed from samples by sound artists and electroacoustic composers.

🔊 In today's installment, Neto works with materials from Jean Schwarz, François Bonnet, and Gilles Racot, interwoven with sounds generated during his own experiments with analog and digital synthesizers. Through processes of appropriation and sonic transformation, the project constructs immersive, continuous, and densely layered soundscapes, exploring memory, the materiality of sound, and spatial perception, expanding upon the aesthetic and conceptual inquiries initiated in the first part of the series.

🇧🇷 Neto is a transdisciplinary artist and professor at the Instituto Federal de São Paulo (IFSP). His work explores the intersections between ecoacoustics, sonification, and immersive spatial audio, investigating how environmental data can be transformed into aesthetic material and sensory experience. He develops projects that articulate sound, image, and technology to conceptualize new ways of listening to the world. Currently, he is focused on the development of low-cost environmental sensors, data-driven sonification, and Python workflows. His practice is also oriented toward a “politics of listening,” inspired by epistemologies of the Global South as well as strategies for mediation and public participation.

05/15/2026

🎷 Peruvian-Chilean artist Renzo Filinich, joined by South African saxophonist Lolo Ntsewa, is back with "A Cybernetic Song," in a video filmed and edited by Alexia Webster. This improvisation, where feedback plays an essential role, incorporates the sound of the wind, entering through the machine and the saxophone.

05/14/2026

🇵🇦From Panama, PAISAXE Ensamble sent us "El torito guapo de la arena," performed by clarinetist Alexis Fong, violinist Oryana Racines, violist José Pabuence, cellist Yumiko Tokumoto, and bassist Mar Alzamora.

🐂 The title character, widow of Joaquín and mother of young Joaquín, owns a bull that knows her secret: she is pregnant with the foreman's child. During the town's patron saint festival, the bull is captured and, once in the bullring, recognizes the foreman and wounds him. In the end, the foreman is saved and everyone celebrates with singing and dancing.

🎻 Founded in 2008, Paisaxe Ensamble is dedicated to chamber music with an emphasis on Latin American and contemporary repertoire. Since 2016, the ensemble has championed the preservation and dissemination of the work of chiricano composer Gonzalo Brenes. Paisaxe has performed at prominent festivals and venues throughout Panama and was recognized by Ibermúsicas in 2018, 2021, and 2023. The ensemble has collaborated with local and international and national composers. Alongside Argentine composer and producer Pablo Bas, it produced Panaclásica Podcast, the first podcast dedicated to the history of Panamanian music.

05/13/2026

🌀 From La Plata, composer and multi-intstrumentalist Luciana Szeinfeld sent us this video of “Ciclos,” the final song on her debut album, Reflejos. She writes, "The piece evokes an intimate and introspective atmosphere that invites the listener to listen to—and contemplate—the beauty of subtle transformations through repetition. Throughout these cycles, we can draw closer to a realization: everything that begins and ends is part of something much larger and immeasurable."

🇦🇷 From Buenos Aires, Szeinfeld specializes in early and folk music from various parts of the world. She plays the hammered dulcimer, recorders, and flutes. In 2023, she was awarded a grant by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes to record Reflejos, her debut solo album featuring original compositions for the dulcimer. The tracks on the album—composed drawing upon the artist’s own musical journeys—give voice to a distinct local sensibility and the rich cultural blend that defines her.

05/12/2026

Chilean pianist and singer-songwriter Valentina Peralta is back, this time with her song "El Sol." 🌞 Presented in a hybrid set that integrates piano, vocals, field recordings, and samples from key figures in the Mapuche world, Berta Quintreman and Joel Maripil, this song invites us to reflect, even as we dance.

Also a weaver and seamstress, Peralta is the recipient of the 2024 Violeta Parra Sandoval Regional Arts Prize for Music in Ñuble and a graduate of the Escuela Experimental de Música Jorge Peña Hen in La Serena.

05/11/2026

Let's get digital 🔊 From Johannesburg, Peruvian-Chilean multimedia artist Renzo Filinich sent us two pieces, filmed and edited by Alexia Webster. Today we share "Echoes in the Machine," an improvisation session oriented toward the listening of a hybrid ecology—a sonic ecology in which the organic sound of machines intervenes, simulating natural sounds.

Filinich's work explores the intersections of art, technology, and philosophy, focusing on how sound, digital media, and perception are shaped by cosmotechnics and post-anthropocentric thought from a Latin American perspective. He investigates how emerging technologies—particularly AI, simulation, and cybernetic processes—participate in processes of individuation and transform cultural and sensory worlds.

05/10/2026

Gustavo Castellano is back with "Clavelina," an electroacoustic piece from a project that explores experiences involving plant life—flowers, trees, herbs, etc.

Castellano says about the work: "The aim is neither to describe the object itself nor to merely demonstrate how it sounds, but rather to engage in a sensory experience with it, whether visual, tactile, or through its surrounding soundscape."

05/08/2026

A little gem from Santiago de Chile for your weekend 🌊 Here's Camila y Silvio, this time with "Piedra y chagual" off their album Piedra Azul, which honors water and its journey through the world and through all life forms.

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