The east L.A. band, Las Cafeteras has had an amazing year in 2013.
They played the SXSW festival, they won a competition to open up for Juanes in Miami; they played with the L.A. Philharmonic; they played at Grand Central Performances in downtown L.A.; they played with bands like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and on Wednesday night they closed out their “More Than Music” tour at The Echo in Silver Lake with “El Baile”, a show put on by Redbull Panamerika and Golden Voice.
To find out more about the band and their experiences this year, we talked to Annette Torres and here is a little bit of what we talked about.
“It has been an amazing year for Las Cafeteras, and it has all happened very quickly. We never could have imagined that we would have opened for some like Juanes at this point in our career, and there were all those other wonderful events like the show with the L.A. Philharmonic, so we feel very blessed with everything that has happened this last year” Annette stated.
When she mentioned the L.A. Philharmonic show, I asked her how that all came about and she said: “The L.A. Philharmonic and the Walt Disney Hall were looking for bands to play in their 10 year anniversary celebration of their InsideOut project and someone told them about us and they loved what we do, they liked the music and understood our concept and message. They worked out the music and sent us what they wanted to do, but we only had 45 minutes of actual rehearsing with the philharmonic so it was a very nerve-racking experience, but it all came out great”
I asked Annette if there were any events or special moments that stand out from this last year and she answered: “For me there were two, one of them is playing with the L.A. Philharmonic because it was something different and very challenging and it was also very spiritual for me and the reception that we received from the audience was very humbling. The other highlight for me was after playing on a big stage and in front of a large audience at the Grand Central Performances downtown, the next day we played at a graduation ceremony for a Youth Over Violence program and it was at a small community theater and when we played “Luna Lovers”, I sign the lyrics to the song and immediately, a woman stood up from her seat and began to sign the song along with me and that was a very special moment for me because there was a true connection and moments like that is what makes it all worthwhile and that is why I do what I do and play with the band that I play with.”
