Latin Party

Nilko Andreas, Ariadna Castellanos & LaMar

Novecento SoHo

June 22, 2013 by Keith Widyolar

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Nilko Andreas is a classical guitarist, originally from Colombia, who plays Carnegie Hall and similar venues around the world. One of his projects is LaMar, a live music band that combines the fiery sounds of Colombia, Spain, Brazil and Cuba into a New York City groove-centric party. The core group consists of Singer & Guitarist Nilko Andreas, Bassist Matt Geraghty, and Reid Andres on Percussion.

Andreas and LaMar are playing a jazz concert at Carnegie Hall this fall with Spanish flamenco-jazz pianist Ariadna Castellanos. Tonight the entire band came out to play for the first time in public.

“I’ve always been a big fan of flamenco,” said Andreas. “I heard of Ariadna, but didn’t know there was such a thing as flamenco piano. So we are mixing it together and we’ll see what happens.” Percussionist Reid Andres added, “LaMar is sort of a rhumba flamenco meets Cuban son meets groove mix.”

The pictures pretty much tell the story. Novecento was packed with a SoHo crowd of gorgeous men and beautiful women. Andreas, Ariadna and the band kept raising the energy, singing songs that everybody in the Latin world knows, especially if you are from Colombia. People started to dance and the entire evening turned into a night of smiles.

These are artists you normally see on big formal stages, but they are playing right in front of you. It was like a jam session at one of the musician’s home. They took a short break while the DJ kept the room thumping. I didn’t want to leave the party, but I’ll just have to come back another Saturday night at Novecento.