The Platinum Music Awards
New Mexico’s eclectic music scene embraces a tremendous range of styles, including Native American drumming, traditional music that arrived with Spanish and Mexican settlers, and cutting-edge jazz. Six luminaries from the Land of Enchantment are being honored for lifetime achievement at the 2018 Platinum Music Awards, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 30, at the Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 W. San Francisco St.). Nominations came from New Mexico residents and include musicians and bands, music teachers, and others who have made a lasting contribution to music in the state. At the Lensic, a roster of local entertainers play the music of the honorees in a family-friendly concert that runs the gamut from folk music to marching bands.
Among the honorees is Antonia Apodaca, a native of Rociada who has been performing traditional New Mexico music for 80 years. The petite singer, who is now in her nineties, plays the accordion and the guitar — instruments she managed to rescue when escaping from a terrible fire that burned her house down in 2010. She now lives in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and continues to play with her band, Trio Jalapeño. Another honoree, Tom Guralnick, is the founder and executive director of Outpost Productions and Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque. Since 1990, Guralnick, who is also a performing musician, has organized more than 100 jazz concerts a year. Malcom Yepa, founder of the Grammy Award-winning Black Eagle Powwow Drum Group, is from Jemez Pueblo in Walatowa, New Mexico; and Latina musician Nacha Mendez, who grew up in the border town of La Union, has been singing and playing guitar since childhood. The other honorees are William Clark, founder of the Mesilla Valley Concert Band in Las Cruces, and the Hummingbird Music Camp, which has been operating in the Jemez Mountains since 1959.
Tickets to the 2018 Platinum Music Awards are $35-$95, with proceeds benefitting the New Mexico Music Commission’s Music in the Schools and ART2ART projects. Go to ticketssantafe.org. — Jennifer Levin