Photo by Spencer Selvidge
The Ludlow Garage (342 Ludlow Ave) proudly presents bilingual songwriter Gina Chavez—2015 Austin Musician of the Year and 10-time Austin Music Award winner—Friday, February 22, 2019, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets on sale now
With her signature style of Latin folk-pop, Chavez takes audiences on a passionate journey through the Americas, blending the sounds and rhythms of the region with tension and grace. Her bilingual album Up.Rooted (2015) topped the Amazon and Latin iTunes charts following a national feature on NPR’s All Things Considered and a Tiny Desk concert that made NPR’s top 15 of 2015 and has more than 770,000 views. The album was hailed by the Boston Globe, USA Today, Texas Monthly and the Austin Chronicle.
“Siete-D,” a Spanish-language anthem on Up.Rooted, won Chavez the Grand Prize in the 2014 John Lennon Songwriting Contest. “Siete-D” recounts her experience volunteering in a gang-dominated suburb of San Salvador, where she and her partner (now wife) Jodi Granado founded Niñas Arriba, a college fund benefiting young Latinas.
For her latest release, Lightbeam (2018), Chavez traded her acoustic guitar for a Gibson hollow body and worked with producer Dwight A. Baker (MISSIO, Josh Abbott Band, The Wind and the Wave). With classic hooks and a pop aesthetic, the five-song EP showcases Chavez’s artistic versatility and intensely personal lyrics that explore the journey and hardships she and Granado have undergone to publicly express their love for each other. The music video for “Heaven Knows” premiered on Billboard, featuring scenes from the couple’s Texas wedding.
Chavez is an official SXSW artist for the sixth consecutive year, 2014 to 2019. When not touring the U.S., she and her band travel the world as cultural ambassadors with the U.S. State Department. Their most recent tour was in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. For more on Chavez, her music and the Niñas Arriba college fund, visit www.ginachavez.com.
“Her voice stops you in your tracks.” — NPR
