Claudia Acuña Releases Chilean Jazz Album AVE DE LUZ
The Latin Grammy-nominated vocalist celebrates at The Pocket with musicians Manu Koch, Yayo Serka, and Andrés Pollak.
Latin Grammy nominated vocalist Claudia Acuña returns with Ave de Luz - a love letter to her Chilean roots and a bold declaration of identity, from the acclaimed vocalist, composer, and bandleader who has spent three decades weaving South American music into the fabric of New York jazz. Released on Delfin Records, the album is released today on all digital platforms. She will be celebrating the release of the album at new jazz club, The Pocket, located at 130 W 46th St, on September 2.
Where her previous albums drew from the broader Latin American tradition, Ave de Luz goes deeper and more specific: this is Chilean jazz, with Chilean musicians, built around the rhythms, instruments, and songs that shaped Acuña from childhood. The title captures the spirit at the heart of the record, to be a bird of light, carrying one's origins forward through music and across borders.
Her New York ensemble includes Manu Koch on piano and keys, Pablo Vergara on piano, Carlos Henderson on bass, and Yayo Serka on drums and percussion - musicians whose deep knowledge of both jazz and Latin American music gives the band its distinctive footing. Andrés Pollak, who also co-produced the record with Acuña, contributes piano and organ. The Chilean thread runs through the album with Pablo Zárate on Chilean accordion and pandero, and Fredy Torralba on charango, trutruca, and zampoña, traditional and native instruments that root the record in a specific cultural landscape. Paulina García, a celebrated Chilean actress, contributes spoken word, and Daniel Kelley-Acuña adds vocals to one track.
The arrangements are sparse yet full, leaving generous space for Acuña's resonant voice to carry the stories at the center of each song. The band renders South American rhythms with authenticity and nuance, and the production reflects a modern sensibility without losing sight of the music's folk and traditional foundations. Across the track listing, the instrumentation shifts in density, the lyrics move between Spanish and English, and the mood travels from traditional folk themes to contemporary compositions, keeping the listening experience dynamic from start to finish.
Several songs hold particular weight. "Chingalacachingal" is among the most direct pieces Acuña has written, a song that speaks to exhausted hearts and the collective longing for peace and basic human dignity. "Viento del Sur" ("Wind from the South") reflects on belonging and displacement, the feeling of carrying one's homeland wherever life leads. "Piecesitos de Niño" is drawn from a poem by Gabriela Mistral, Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, and features a spoken word performance by Paulina García alongside a daring arrangement that Acuña calls one of her favorite risks on the record. A duet with charango stands as a quiet prayer to Pachamama, mother nature.
The album arrives as the culmination of a journey that began the moment Acuña left Chile for New York, carrying her roots into a new musical world, and spending years learning how those two things could speak to each other. Rather than a declaration of ownership, the album is an act of embrace: Acuña bringing her singular background, her specific corner of Chile, and her life as an immigrant musician to bear on the music she loves. What she describes as an ongoing love letter to Chile, Ave de Luz is the sound of an artist fully inhabiting who she is and where she comes from.
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