Mythos & Memory: A Journey Through Music and Spoken Word

Flor Garduño: Paths of Life

Mythos-Memory

Mythos & Memory: A Journey Through Music and Spoken Word

Thursday, April 17, 2025 | 7–8:30 PM

Silver Street Studios
2000 Edwards Street, Houston, TX 77007
Free tickets required

Mythos & Memory: A Journey Through Music and Spoken Word is an interdisciplinary performance inspired by the exhibition Flor Garduño: Paths of Life, on view at Silver Street Studios through April 26, 2025. Presented by FotoFest in collaboration with ALMAAHH, and Ponce Project, this event takes place within the exhibition itself, allowing live music and poetry to commingle with Garduño’s evocative photographs. 

The performance features L’acalet Dúo—Benilde Larios and Benjamín González—who bring to life the diverse lyrical repertoire of Mexican and Latin American music, and Jasminne Mendez, an award-winning Dominican-American poet and playwright. Together, they create an immersive dialogue between image, sound, and spoken word, offering audiences a multisensory experience that explores themes of legacy, myth, and life’s multifaceted journeys.

Flor Garduño: Paths of Life/Senderos de vida is organized by El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City and the artist’s studio in collaboration with FotoFest, Houston.

Interested in volunteering? Visit our Volunteer page to learn more.

About ALMAAHH

ALMAAHH (Advocates of a Latino Museum of Cultural and Visual Arts & Archive Complex in Houston, Harris County) is a Houston-based nonprofit organization dedicated to creating the most important Latino arts and culture complex in the U.S. ALMAAHH is being created to understand who Latinos are and their relevance for the nation, to showcase their soul through arts and culture, and to inspire new generations.

About Ponce Project

Ponce Project Music Foundation (PPMF) is a non-profit organization based in Houston founded by Mexican pianist Omar Herrera Arizmendi. Its Mission is to resuscitate the canon of the classical music from Latin America. Its Vision is to make it part of the standard repertoire.

About L’acalet Dúo

Benilde Larios and Benjamín González, both graduates of the University of Veracruz, have come together with the aim of promoting the diverse lyrical repertoire of Mexican and Latin American music creating their new proyect L´acalet Duo. Their proposal spans from the realm of classical music and art songs to popular Latin song genres (bolero, waltz, son, tango, etc.), where they showcase composers such as María Grever, Salvador Moreno, Julio César Oliva, Agustín Lara, Ariel Ramírez, among others, through narrative, poetry and music.

Their artistic endeavors have led them to perform in various venues and festivals in Mexico and abroad, with notable appearances at the 2022 Nuntempa Festival of 20th and 21st-century music in Xalapa, Mexico, and the Latin American Music Festival 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2023, the renowned Mexican composer Julio César Oliva composed and dedicated to the duo México en su Manera de Querer and El Amor y sus Verdades, two new song cycles premiered at the Slosberg Recital Hall of Brandeis University in Boston, Massachusetts, at the request of The Right to Immigration Institute. In 2024, they were awarded the PECDA Veracruz grant with the project México en su Manera de Querer, a recording production released in February 2025, featuring new music by Julio César Oliva.

About Jasminne Mendez

Jasminne Mendez is Pura Belpré Honor Award recepient and a Dominican-American poet, playwright and author of several books for children and adults. She is also a poet, playwright, translator, and professional audiobook narrator. Her most recent publication Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial), a novel in verse about a young girl diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal and others.

Her YA memoir, Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American (Arte Público Press) and her debut poetry collection, City Without Altar (Noemi Press), were recently recognized with honors and awards by the Texas Institute of Letters and her debut picture book Josefina’s Habichuelas (Arte Público Press) was the 2022 Writer’s League of Texas Children’s Book Discovery Prize Winner. She has translated Amanda Gorman’s best-selling picture books Change Sings (La canción del cambio) and Something, Someday (Algo, algún día), the best-selling picture book The 1619 Project: Born on the Water (El proyecto 1619: Nacieron sobre el agua) by Nikole Hannah Jones and Reneé Watson and the Pura Belpré Award Winning graphic novel Frizzy (Rizos) by Claribel Ortega.