Fabiola Mendez
Austin Arts Center
Trinity College
Hartford
March 12, 2026
In the black box theater of the Austin Arts Center, it was easy to get lost in the sights and sounds of Puerto Rico.
I was there for the first concert of the season for the Fabiola Mendez Quartet. For Mendez, an Emmy-nominated composer and world-famous master of the Puerto Rican cuatro instrument, it was her first concert in six months following the birth of her first child. While it was my first time hearing her music, I’m confident in saying that she hasn’t lost a step.
The performance was part concert, part history lesson as Mendez taught the audience about both the music she was playing and the island it comes from. She told us that the instrument she was playing, the Puerto Rican cuatro, did indeed start its life as a four-string instrument. The national instrument of Puerto Rico has undergone many changes over hundreds of years. Now the modern cuatro consists of five pairs of strings.
It was also an introduction to the culture and influences that Mendez has cherished from her home island. Her song “Dedicatoria” is inspired by a poem by a famous Puerto Rican poet who wrote about the important women in her life. Mendez’s music is warm and expansive, reminiscent of so many different Puerto Rican folk songs that I’ve heard while living in Hartford. She was accompanied by Juan Maldonado on bass, whose own intricate stylings were on full display during the song. Miguel Martinez performed on percussion; Adrian Maldonado played the drums.
My Spanish is not great,despite several years of study in school and several years of marriage to a Puerto Rican woman. I did manage to recognize a word that my ex-wife used to throw around from time to time: jibaro. The word is basically equivalent to calling someone “country” here. Where she meant it as a jest towards her family, Mendez takes the word as a proud signifier of the people that she comes from. She invited the audience to sing along with her performance of “Aguinaldo Jibaro,” joining in on the phrase “Le lo lai,” which is common in Puerto Rican folk music.
Mendez doesn’t just rely on her extensive knowledge of music from the countryside for inspiration. She combines traditional sounds with Afro-Caribbean rhythms and jazz-infused improvisation to bring a new kind of music to the audience. It’s a style that she says makes every performance unique, because the improvisation of the moment is a response to the prepared music, but also the energy and mood of the crowd.
“We have the songs, but everything else in her is the magic,” she said, gesturing to the audience.
Not only is Mendez a virtuosic cuatro player; she’s also a terrific singer. In “Trigueña,” a song she wrote to celebrate the many different skin colors that make up the Puerto Rican population, her voice took center stage, enveloping the entire theater with her love for her culture and people.
I’ve been to Puerto Rico only once, but I felt like I was back there as Fabiola Mendez took us on her tour of the island– not to the usual tourist places and cities, but to the mountains and countryside where the jibaro are found, and the sound that she she shared with Hartford.
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