Eliana Cuevas + Jorge Glem launch Mi Pequeña

Eliana Cuevas & Jorge Glem Release Mi Pequeña — An Intimate Homage to Venezuela’s Soul — Toronto, Canada —

UPC: 199502387228

Catalog: LWR056A

Release Date: 2025-11-07

Multi–Latin Grammy winner Jorge Glem, widely regarded as the world’s greatest cuatro player, joins forces with CFMA-winning Venezuelan Canadian vocalist Eliana Cuevas, to release Mi Pequeña (Lulaworld Records) on November 7, an album of tender remembrance, virtuosity, and national pride.

The collection of duo performanced form love letter to Venezuela, a cultural dispatch from memory and exile, and an homage to a fallen comrade, the late and luminous Aquiles Báez.

The title track, Mi Pequeña, was composed by Báez, inspired by his young daughter Andrea, and stands here as both an invocation and a benediction. Cuevas and Glem don’t just interpret the song—they lift it into eternity, naming the entire record after it as an act of reverence.

At its core, Mi Pequeña is an album of bare-bones honesty: voice and cuatro. Stripped of excess, what remains is the marrow of Venezuelan songcraft—the warm timbre of Cuevas’ voice intertwining with Glem’s mercurial cuatro. In this intimate format, every nuance counts; every breath and every pluck is a confession. “When there are only two of us,” Cuevas says, “there’s nowhere to hide. It is vulnerable, it is raw, and it is breathtaking.”

Glem, known internationally through his Grammy-winning work with C4 Trío, reminds us why the cuatro is Venezuela’s beating heart. His instrument doesn’t just accompany; it converses, cajoles, challenges, and consoles. Together, Cuevas and Glem resurrect the kitchen-table sessions of Venezuelan families, where song was as common as bread, and memory was carried on melody.

The Repertoire: Memory, Tradition, and Play The album unfurls like a map of Venezuelan sound, tracing both the sacred and the playful: •

“La Partida” (Carlos Bonet) captures the anguish of farewell with a virtuoso waltz tinged with jazz inflections.

• “Venme a Buscar” (Henry Martínez) pleads for reconciliation with balladic tenderness.

• “El Becerrito” (Simón Díaz) and “Un Heladero con Clase” (Luis Laguna) bring the countryside alive, whether through the innocence of a calf or the joy of a singing ice cream man.

• “El Diablo Suelto” (Heraclio Fernández & Enrique Hidalgo) unleashes the joropo’s whirlwind energy.

• “Cambur Pintón”, a simple mnemonic for cuatro tuning, blossoms into a joyous reminder of how music is carried forward by memory.

• Cuevas herself contributes “El Cuatro Venezolano”, a newly minted homage that features guest wizard Jeremy Ledbetter on piano, marrying Venezuelan calypso with the fiery pajarillo.

• The closer, “Motivos” (Italo Pizzolante), lands like a sigh of gratitude— finding love and meaning in the small things.

Cuevas, born and raised in Cuevas, carries the city’s soundscape in her voice: joropo, merengue, Afro-Venezuelan drumming, salsa, pop rock, and the hybrid rhythms of the capital’s restless streets. “Every family gathering,” she recalls, “someone would pull out a cuatro, a mandolin, a guitar, and the music would begin. These songs are the soundtrack of my memory.”

And memory here is no nostalgic indulgence. For Cuevas, singing Venezuelan songs in Canada is an act of reclamation. “The world knows Venezuela for its struggles,” she says, “but not enough people know its cultural wealth. I want to show that beauty through music.”

Cuevas first crossed paths with Glem at Toronto’s Koerner Hall in 2021, where he performed with trumpeter Etienne Charles. Their conversation led, two years later, to a Toronto residency, a performance at the Lulaworld Festival, and the birth of Mi Pequeña. For both artists, the project became a bridge—not only between continents but between memory and continuity, loss and renewal.

This is Cuevas’ second intimate duo project. Her 2021 collaboration with Aquiles Báez, El Curruchá, now glows as a bittersweet precursor to Mi Pequeña. With Báez’s untimely death in 2022, the new record became both a tribute and a torchbearer. Cuevas’ daughters have become willing torchbearers too. “They support me,” she says with a smile. “They even like it!” But what they are really supporting is a cultural mission—to ensure the cuatro is heard, understood, and never mistaken for a ukulele again.

Mi Pequeña will be released worldwide on Lulaworld Records, marking another milestone in Cuevas’ acclaimed career as a bridge-builder between Latin American tradition and Canadian creativity. For audiences, this album offers not just music but a journey: a reminder that Venezuela, even in exile, sings on with clarity, humour, tenderness, and fire.