Cascada de Flores specializes in achingly beautiful songs from Latin America’s golden age. At the heart of the music is the gorgeous voice of Arwen Lawrence and the expressive guitar of Jorge Liceaga. Together they evoke a wonderfully lush, intimate atmosphere. The San Francisco Chronicle has called their music “delightfully upbeat, mournful, whimsical, and wistful,” and describes their fourth and latest album, Radio Flor, as “a musical love letter to the Golden Age of radio, when songs reigned and a melody grabbed your heart for a lifetime.”

For tonight’s performance, they’ve assembled a conjunto featuring several pillars of the Bay Area’s traditional music and Latin jazz scene, with Saúl Sierra-Alonso on leoncita and double bass, Marco Díaz on trumpet and piano, Brian Rice on percussion, Kyla Danysh on violin, Jorge on a variety of traditional guitars, and Arwen on vocals, as well as dancing and playing rhythm guitar. “The ensemble,” says critic Andrew Gilbert, describing Radio Flor, “has created a delightful frame for their repertoire of emotionally wrought boleros, rhythmically insistent sones, bambucos, guarachas, and even a soaring Rodgers and Hart gem. Designed like a vintage radio broadcast, the production includes station identifications, hilarious mock commercials, and a brief radio drama starring Liceaga as El Dandy. Playful, witty, and artfully staged, the show is as charming as the music is breathtaking.”

An evening with Cascada de Flores evokes the wonder of a world gone by, with family and friends gathered around a radio made of wood and tubes and wires, each song inspiring joy or tears or wild dancing, the stuff of cherished memories.

Visit the Cascada de Flores website

Listen to a track from Cascada de Flores: