Flute Center Salon Series Presents 

Sugar Hill Salon: Celebration of Hispanic Heritage Through Music

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Sugar Hill Salon is one of the first chamber music series and artistic collectives that centers on black and brown woodwind artistry in classical music. We are a black and queer-owned organization that offers free public concerts in Harlem that showcase wind repertoire that lacks representation within "traditional" chamber programming along with uplifting black and brown musicians performing them. Through commissioning chamber works and monthly concerts featuring artists on the scene, Sugar Hill Salon is decolonizing classical music for a more equitable future for black and brown communities.
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Alyssa Mercedes Mena: A native of Miami, Florida, Cuban-American flutist, Alyssa Mercedes Mena, is currently based in Brooklyn, New York where she is an active teacher, composer, and performer. Alyssa currently holds a position as Sales Manager and Sheet Music Manager at Flute Center of New York.

While in New York City, Alyssa has performed with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, New Conductors Orchestra, Queer Urban Orchestra, String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Broadway Bach Ensemble, Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, and Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra. Passionate about chamber music and community outreach, Alyssa is a part of the Sugar Hill Salon Chamber Series that performs outreach concerts throughout Harlem that showcase wind repertoire that lacks representation within traditional chamber programming. In 2022, Alyssa premiered her solo alto flute piece “Hasta La Raiz” at the National Flute Convention. 

Alyssa graduated from a performing arts high school, New World School of the Arts (NWSA) in 2015, where she studied with Suzan DeGooyer. That same year, Alyssa received national recognition from the National YoungArts Foundation where she was selected as a YoungArts winner in Classical Flute. In 2019, Alyssa graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Flute Performance at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, where she studied privately with Trudy Kane. While at Frost, Alyssa was a Stamps Distinguished Ensemble Scholar, flutist of the Stamps Woodwind Quintet, as part of a 4-year fellowship, that had actively performed outreach concerts and recitals throughout South Florida, as well as New York City, NY, Atlanta, GA, and Louisville, KY. In 2021, Alyssa received her Master of Music at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where she studied flute privately with Jim Walker and studied composition privately with Veronika Krausas
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David Valbuena: Born and raised in Queens, NY clarinetist David Valbuena is a versatile and compelling orchestral and chamber musician that has performed throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and China. Proud of his Colombian-American heritage, David is strong proponent of Latin American culture within classical music, often performing works by past and contemporary Hispanic composers. In 2022, he collaborated with The Astoria Music Project and acclaimed pianist/composer, Pablo Zinger for a series of concerts centered around the celebration of Hispanic heritage performing various musical styles such as zarzuela, tango, and merengue. He has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, David Gefen Hall, and KKL Lucerne among many others. David has most recently been appointed as clarinetist with Quintet of the Americas, an ensemble established in Bogota, Colombia in 1976 whose mission is to broaden knowledge and appreciation for new music from the Western hemisphere.

David has performed with several notable ensembles such as the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Southwest Florida Symphony, On-Site Opera, West Point Band, Sugar Hill Salon, S.E.M. Ensemble, ShoutHouse, Harlem Chamber Players and was a regular substitute on the 2018 Off-Broadway revival of the Fiddler on The Roof in Yiddish, both in the pit and on stage as a klezmer musician. Recent festival appearances include the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Connecticut Summer Festival, NYC Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and the Endless Mountain Music Festival.

As an educator, David is bilingual teaching artist at The Hamilton Grange Middle School and holds several residencies throughout New York City as a Midori and Friends teaching artist. He has recorded for New Amsterdam Records and can be heard on ShoutHouse’s most recent album, Cityscapes. David holds a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor of Music from Queens College.
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Steven Palacio: Dynamic Colombian-American bassoonist Steven Palacio invites audiences to reimagine the classical music concert experience through energetic presentations of the instrumental repertoire, thought-provoking lectures, and experimentation with cross-genre programming. Mr. Palacio is committed to bringing the works of living composers to life with the commissioning of solo and chamber music works. A champion of new music, he has performed 15 world premieres this season alone including Pixie by Trey Makler; a joint commission with the New York City Ballet for the New York Choreographic Institute. He has performed with the League of Composers Orchestra and is a member AXIOM, a new music ensemble that is devoted to performing masterworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. This season, AXIOM will be working with Steve Reich on a performance of Tehillim (1981) that will be featured in a documentary for the BBC.

Mr. Palacio has a love for understanding operational structures of nonprofit organization. This interest manifested itself into an invitation to participate in the Barnard-Columbia-Juilliard exchange program. This opportunity has allowed Mr. Palacio to increase his knowledge of non-profit management through courses in finance, fundraising, and board governance at the Columbia School of Professional Studies. He has previously worked at the Interlochen Center for the Arts as Orchestra Manager for the Interlochen Philharmonic in 2016, the Aspen Music Festival and School as the Assistant Orchestra Manager for the Aspen Conducting Academy in 2017, and Orchestra Manager for the Aspen Chamber Symphony in 2018.

Mr. Palacio holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School under the direction of Kim Laskowski. He holds an Artist Diploma at the Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music (Canada) under Frank Morelli, a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs and a Bachelor of Music with honors from The Florida State University under the direction of Jeffrey Keesecker.