Gina Chavez in Concert

Gina Chavez, a 10-time Austin Music Award-winner who has topped the Latin iTunes and Amazon charts, will perform with her band as part of UNC Asheville’s Cultural Events Series, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6 in Lipinsky Auditorium on campus.

Chavez, a native of Austin, Tex., who recently completed a 12-nation tour as a cultural ambassador with the U.S. State Department, is now crisscrossing the U.S. with stops at New York’s Lincoln Center, the California Center for the Arts and venues in ten states in between.

Chavez’s current shows feature songs from her new EP Lightbeam, about her personal journey as a Catholic Latina married to a woman. Although Chavez made her first recording in 2007, it took a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds needed to produce the 2014 bilingual album, Up.Rooted, which brought her national breakthrough.

The album includes the song Siete-D (7-D), named for a bus line in San Salvador where she and her partner (now wife) Jodi Granado worked for eight months teaching English to teenage girls in a gang-dominated neighborhood. Chavez and Granado have established a college fund that has sent three of the girls to university. Siete-D won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and Chavez was named Austin Musician of the Year in 2015. Her Tiny Desk Concert made NPR’s top 15 list that same year.

Tickets for the Gina Chavez concert are available at the door and online. Ticket prices are $15 general admission; free for UNC Asheville students; $5 for all other students and for UNC Asheville employees; $10 for UNC Asheville alumni and OLLI members.

Chavez also will lead a free master class open to everyone, from noon-1 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, in Karpen Hall, Laurel Forum.

Support for UNC Asheville’s Cultural Events Series comes from Biltmore Farms Hotels, Blue Ridge Public Radio and Our State magazine. For more information, contact UNC Asheville’s Events & Conferences Office, events@unca.edu or 828.251.6853.