Lua Project - Mexilachian Concert

A blend of original and traditional music inspired by Mexican, Appalachian & Atlantic basin musics.

Mexilachian music is a new style of traditional music inspired by Mexican and Appalachian song forms, Jewish and Eastern European tonalities, Baroque melodic ideas, and narrative storytelling approaches. They have created a repertoire that constitutes a new traditional music that is being shared with their children to experience, transform, and pass on.

The Lua Project has been called a ‘cultural pollinator’, and was formed by David Berzonsky and Estela Knott after they returned to Virginia to raise children after almost a decade of travelling, performing, and recording, throughout the Western hemisphere, in places as far afield as Lima, Peru, Veracruz, Mexico, Recife, Brazil, and Berkeley, Ca.

In so doing, they have found musical adventure and a diverse cross-cultural experience right here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains where the backdrop of life in a multi-ethnic community serves as a wellspring from which Lua Project draws subject matter and inspiration, which is then blended into a music that it describes as Mexilachian.

With an artistic commitment to go deep inside their own families’ cultural roots, they meticulously thread together the narrative of their history— Appalachian, Mexican, Jewish— into a completely original yet seamless journey through styles and centuries. They write gorgeous melodies, punctuated by Estela’s soaring voice and the band’s complex and subtle arrangements.


The concert is partially supported by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.