This year’s NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner Alisa Amador performed a full Tiny Desk Concert that featured her winning composition, “Milonga accidental”, and three other original songs. The performance was the first filmed at NPR’s Tiny Desk studio with an audience in over 800 days.
Alisa Amador was accompanied by a string quartet as she opened the celebratory set with “Milonga accidental”, the song that won her the Tiny Desk Contest and the only song of the set sung entirely in Spanish. A backing band then emerged to support the singer with guitar, bass, drums, and keys as she launched into her upbeat soul-pop tune “Timing”. At one point in the song, Alisa walked over to guitarist Jamie Oshima and strummed his guitar for him as he played a melody on keyboard with his right hand. “This was her idea,” he said as the two musicians played the guitar together. She then grabbed a guitar of her own before the group launched into the contemplative number “Slow Down”.
Before beginning her final song, Amador stopped to acknowledge the difficulty of the pandemic and the need for togetherness.
“This pandemic has a way of making us feel so alone, and we’ve lost so many people that we love, and we’re away and distanced from so many people that we love. This song is called ‘Together’ and it’s a celebration of the revolutionary power of love in the face of such division and such opposition and such challenges. … In this moment, I feel like we need to remember how not alone we are more than ever,” she said.
Watch Alisa Amador’s Tiny Desk Concert below, and scroll down to view the tour dates for the Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour.
Alisa Amador – Tiny Desk Concert
Tiny Desk Contest On The Road 2022 Tour Dates:
June 7th – Atlanta, GA (with GBP/WABE) – Aisle 5
June 12th – Seattle, WA (with KEXP) – KEXP Gathering Space
June 14th – Los Angeles, CA (LAist/KPCC) – Resident
June 18th – New York, NY (with WFUV) – BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
