While growing up in Albuquerque, Flor Isabel, performed in a number of musical ensembles: steel drum band, acapella choir, and handbell choir. She also played the Tuba in her school orchestra, and took part in classical piano competitions. With a voracious appetite for different instruments, she taught herself to play the guitar at age 14 after a peer scoffed at her ability to learn a complex song on the instrument. Shortly afterwards, in the midst of this whirlwind of musical activity, Flor wrote and recorded her first original song.
As she told me:
“I was planning to ask my friend Barack to a dance, a high school dance where the girls ask the guys, and everyone comes up with these fancy, swanky ways of asking each other. I decided I wanted to write a song. The goal was to burn him a CD and show him a song on a Walkman player and be like: ‘Hey, check out this song!’ I had to do a lot of backtracking to figure out how to make that happen. It was a really messy process, but really fun. I used Windows Movie Maker as my DAW back then, where I would rip the audio from a video file that had no video and just continue to layer tracks one by one. I knew that that wasn’t how the pros did it. But, eventually I did figure it out, and I did ask him to the dance, and he did say yes, and we’re still friends to this day.”
An internship at the University of New Mexico’s recording program followed shortly, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Technology at Loyola University in New Orleans was the next step in her journey exploring the world of recorded sound. Though Flor recorded many bands in her time in Louisiana, and had a career doing live sound as well, it wasn’t until she moved to Taos a few years ago that she started to consider the possibility of sharing her original material with other people IRL.
An early adopter of the Soundcloud platform, Flor snagged the username @flor, and for those of you who enjoy the five original compositions that she performs throughout her Fresh Wind session, I highly recommend checking out the 14-years-worth of her material that is housed on that platform. With a confessional songwriting style, fans of Phoebe Bridgers, Cat Power, Mark Kozelek, and the more melancholic strains in the world of Beck will find a lot to love in Flor’s music.
At the time of publication, Flor Isabel has yet to play a public concert here in Taos - but, I have a feeling it will be happening soon.
7: Fresh Wind Session No. 28: Flor Isabel