From the Journal: Tower of Tune

“Every part In all places All at As soon as” isn’t simply an Oscar-winning film. It additionally describes Victoria Cardona’s strategy to stay efficiency.

Taking to the stage in ripped denims for a gig this previous February at The Sq. in West Palm Seaside, Cardona performed each instrument in her elaborate setup of three guitars, a handful of percussion devices she calls her “toys,” and, most crucially, the six results pedals at her toes. These allowed her to report after which loop her rhythms stay, making a layered, metronomic groove out of entire material.

Choose your metaphor: Cardona is without delay an architect, constructing a track brick by sonic brick—a bass line, then a cowbell, then a shaker, then her electrical guitar—and a plate-spinner from some outdated vaudeville routine, making certain each aspect in her arsenal is in movement on the identical time. On high of all of it, she sings.

Fastidious about each sound that reverberates from her stage, she has this balancing act all the way down to a science. “You stack phrases upon themselves; it’s what a producer would do, however in a stay setting—with no probability of erasing what you simply put down,” she says. “The trickiest factor is the timing, and ensuring that you simply begin on the beat and cease on the beat, as a result of in any other case it’s this wash of messy issues that don’t align.”

A Wellington resident, Cardona has been honing her one-woman-band aesthetic for a decade, adopting a relentless efficiency schedule. She gigs about 4 nights every week at venues from Boca Raton (The Waterstone and Damaged Sound Membership amongst them) to Hobe Sound, performing units that may span 4 hours. (She maintains an energetic calendar at victoriacardona.com.)

As for the fabric, it’s a mirrored image of her wide-ranging tastes, ability set and heritage. A primary-generation U.S. native from a household of Cuban immigrants, she sings in Spanish and English, and the music of Havana, as a lot because the free improvisation of her favourite jam bands, permeates her units. “My influences are in all places, and that’s one thing that I feel widens my viewers, as a result of I’m musically ADD,” she says. “I am going from blues and jazz to Afro-Cuban to soul and R&B, simply all the things.”

At The Sq., her set included Invoice Withers’ “Simply the Two of Us,” Males at Work’s “Land Down Underneath,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Goals” and Amy Winehouse’s “Again to Black,” together with her variations typically nominally resembling the originals. That is one other of Cardona’s items: bringing a recent ear to acquainted cuts, prompting us to listen to them in a brand new method.

Cardona’s repertoire for her solo mission consists of some 200 songs. In the end, although, her ambitions exceed taking part in covers, regardless of how imaginatively she interprets them. She holds a B.A. in Music Composition from the McNally Smith Faculty of Music in Minnesota, and harbors a want to attain film soundtracks. And he or she’s begun writing unique music for her forthcoming debut album, which, owing to a connection she struck at one among her exhibits, options an A-list backing band: pianist Invoice Payne of Little Feat; bassist Jimmy Haslip, previously of the Yellowjackets; and veteran Latin percussionist Jimmy Branly. These veteran musicians have been contributing their components remotely, however Cardona expects to fly out to Los Angeles to attain the immediacy of live-in-studio taking part in.

She hopes to tour the mission after the album is launched; she already has captured an viewers in Europe, significantly in locations like Majorca, Spain and the Canary Islands. Within the meantime, she’ll proceed to pop up at a membership or a bar or a lodge close to you—hitting each be aware of each instrument, and residing the dream of a full-time musician.

“I’m at work on daily basis, whether or not it’s rehearsing or selling or creating flyers or the recording facet of it,” she says. “It’s a relentless factor, nevertheless it’s my favourite factor on the planet, and I can’t think about what I’d be doing with my time in any other case.”

This text is from the Might/June 2023 situation of Boca journal. For extra like this, click on right here to subscribe to the journal.