Back Sol y Canto's 30-Year Celebration Album, "En Tu Órbita"

Check out this awesome WBUR (NPR Boston) feature that highlights our new album and our upcoming album release concert on September 21st in Somerville!! Gracias to writer Noah Shaffer. Thanks to you all for your support and love!

xoxo,

Rosi & Brian

Estamos FELICES por esta nota que nos sacó una de las emisoras públicas más importantes de Boston, recomendando el nuevo álbum y concierto del 21 de septiembre en Boston. ¡Gracias a todos ustedes por su apoyo y cariño! - Rosi & Brian

¡Saludos! Para leer lo que sigue en Español pulsa aquí.

We are Rosi and Brian Amador, founders of Sol y Canto. If you know our music, you understand why we describe it as Latin roots music to change the world. Back in the summer of 1994 our first Latin band closed a 10 year chapter and we knew we had to find a way to keep making the music that our fans reminded us brought them joy and hope. So in the fall of 1994, we birthed Sol y Canto. Best decision we ever made other than having our twins!

To commemorate our 30-year trajectory, we're thrilled to share that we're putting the finishing touches on our brand new studio album, "En tu órbita" (In your orbit). For the past nine months we've been back in the studio with our bandmates and some amazing special musical guests, recording a wonderful batch of new songs. They are mostly Brian's originals, plus some creative arrangements of beloved Latin American classics. This is a collection of songs that look within and without, with breathtaking depth and disarming simplicity. We can't wait to share them with you! For your viewing and listening pleasure, here's an animation we created for you of a few photos and videos documenting our recording journey all these months. The song you'll hear is the opening cut of the album, composed by Brian: "Por la Serranía" and it was inspired our life-changing walk on the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain in 2022.

Like previous Sol y Canto recordings, “En tu órbita” takes the listener through a variety of Latin American and Caribbean musical styles, suffused with jazz and contemporary folk flavors, intricate vocal harmonies and lush guitar. But long-time fans will also notice new textural and harmonic nuances in the subtle, powerful tenderness of our group’s mature sound.

As you can imagine, all this creation doesn’t come cheap. The cost of the new album includes:

$7000 in studio, engineer and producer costs

$4000 in musicians’ fees

$1500 in art design

$2000 in CD manufacturing

$7500 in social media campaigns, promotion and project management

Sub-total: $22,000

Plus, to celebrate this new release and 30th anniversary, the iconic Club Passim is presenting us in the historic Crystal Ballroom of the Somerville Theater in Somerville, MA on Saturday, September 21st, where we plan to document this special occasion by hiring videographers to film it, so as to share this with our global community.

$5000 in Documentation

All told, this will cost around $27,000. We are so grateful to several unbelievably generous individuals who’ve donated $11,000 already, and now we’re raising the balance of $16,000 to finish it all up and get the new music out into the world. Will you help us?

We'd like to give you something back <3

Any gifts of $50 more will get a free CD (or digital download) of our new recording, including the beautiful CD booklet with lyrics, translations and hand-made drawings by Brian (yes he did that!) with a note expressing our heartfelt thanks and our autograph. If you’d like us to mail you your CD please fill out this Google form. (We're unable to mail the CD abroad, but we'll be happy to provide the digital download, of course.)

A Cool Thing! Album Sales Will Help These Nonprofits

We make music to lift people up, and we also want to use our music to make the world a better place. Partial proceeds from this album will go to two wonderful nonprofits: Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen , to help with their crucial efforts to feed people in areas of conflict and crisis, and ZUMIX , an East Boston-based nonprofit organization dedicated to serving youth and building community through music and creative technology, providing access to top-quality arts experiences for a low-income, historically underserved neighborhood.

Below, I leave you with a few of the lyrics and translations to some of the most beautiful songs (in my humble opinion) that Brian has ever written (and that's saying a lot)! I hope you find them as inspiring as I do. Bravo my Brian - te felicito por estas canciones tan conmovedoras y bellas. ¡Son joyas! (I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart for these beautiful and moving songs).

¡Gracias de todo corazón, por tu generosidad! Thanks from the bottom of our hearts for your generosity!

Con cariño/Fondly,

Rosi (y Brian)

El universo adentro es más grande que el de acá

El viento que respiro me alienta a despegar

Y en la quietud encuentro un poco de eternidad.

Inhala. Exhala. Existes.

The universe inside is bigger than this one here,

The wind I breathe encourages me to take flight

And in the quietude I find a bit of eternity.

Inhale. Exhale. You exist.

(from “Horizonte adentro” by Brian Amador)

____________

No me importa si te olvidas de las cosas

No me importa si tus medias no hacen juego

No hace falta que me hables si da gusto el silencio

No necesito más, sólo quiero estar en tu órbita

No necesito más, sólo quiero estar en tu órbita

I don’t care if you forget things;

I don’t care if your socks don’t match;

There’s no need to talk to me if the silence is nice.

I don’t need anything else, I just want to be in your orbit.

(from “En tu órbita” by Brian Amador)

____________

Now we’ve go white rage rampage, late stage social fragmentation

And we’re still trying to make good on that Declaration.

One step forward, one step back

One step forward, one step back

How we gonna get anywhere like that?

(from “One Step Forward” by Brian Amador)

Our Mission Statement

Sol y Canto’s mission is to create music and performances that move, delight, excite and connect – connect the audience to the richness of Latin American culture; connect individuals, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, to each other through shared experience of music, poetry, humor and a joyful, playful vibe; and connect us all to our hopes and visions of a better world.