The first time I experienced an ensemble that Carlos Niño had brought together, I was unexpectedly brought to tears. My daughters would tell you that everything makes me cry, which is also true, but this did not feel like a performance - it was more of an improvisational prayer.  I remember feeling the breath of the flute as an extension of the wind that blew over me, and I was deeply transfixed by the sensations of this animist field of sound.  It was one of those moments when music reaches into the eternal and touches something that worlds just can’t express.

Carlos was one of the first musicians that came to mind to bring to The Mirror when we landed here. His first instinct was to bring his mentor Luis Pérez Ixoneztli out from Mexico. Luis is a highly influential Mexican composer and multi-instrumentalist whose life has been devoted to the study and preservation of Indigenous musical traditions. Beginning in the early 1970s in Mexico City, his journey into native instruments evolved into a profound exploration of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sound. Traveling across Mexico, he learned directly from Maya, Nahuatl, Mazateco, Yoeme, Comcaac, Rarámuri, Wixárika, and other living traditions — gathering not only instruments, but songs, stories, and ancestral memory. His music reaches deep into the past while existing entirely outside of time, channeling the soul of Mexico through sacred wind and percussion instruments.