Nacha Mendez @ El Farol

Event Description

Singer songwriter whose music was aired on the first annual Latin Grammy Awards on CBS and who has performed locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Nacha Mendez (also known as Marghreta Cordero) grew up in the tiny border town of La Union, in southern New Mexico, where she began singing and playing the guitar at an early age. She learned traditional Ranchera canción from her grandmother and performed in border towns near El Paso with her cousins, the Black Brothers, sons of ex-Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black.

She went on to study classical voice and electronic music at New Mexico State University before moving to New York City, where she studied flamenco guitar with Manuel Granados of the Music Conservatory of Barcelona, Spain. In the early ’90s, she was a principal singer in Robert Ashley’s opera company, touring Europe and Japan and translated the libretto for Ashley's opera Now Eleanor’s Idea. She performed trouser roles in three of his operas throughout Japan, at the Avignon Music Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Strasbourg, France, Graz, Austria, and Berlin.