Latin Sounds with a Modern Groove Shake the Pier Thursday Night<title>  <META content="Santa Monica Local News and information, housing, council meetings, police, schools, rent control, business, hotels, living wage, The Lookout, santa monica news, daily online news, surfsantamonica.com, california, los angeles, beaches, housing, politics, sports, real estate, westcoast, Santa Monica pier, Pacific Ocean, tourist, promenade, Westside, entertainment, community, parks, apartments, promenade, sound studios, rent control, entertainment, shopping, surf, surfsantamonica.com, santa monica surf, movie industry, film, sound, games, bollyball, rollerblading, santa monica mountains, westwood, brentwood," name=KEYWORDS> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR> </HEAD> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#000000" vlink="#333366" alink="#000000"> <table width="801" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" 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Groove Shake the Pier Thursday Night</h2> </td> </tr> </table>  <table width="544" height="799" border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="524" height="799" valign="top"> <p>By Lookout Staff</p> <p><em>July 12</em> -- The pier planks will turn into a dance floor when a pair of Latin acts brings their infectious rhythms to the Twilight Dance series concert Thursday night. </p> <p>Direct from San Juan, Puerto Rico, three-time Grammy nominated Plena Libre have reinvented and updated the traditional genre from the turn of the 19th century, turning it into a living and breathing, popular, evolving form.</p> <p>Founded by Gary Nuñez in 1994, the 13-member orchestra adds to the staple pandero ensemble bass, keyboards, timbales, congas, four trombones, miscellaneous and percussion, as well as some of the best plena singers (soneros), including the legendary Wishy Camacho, found in Puerto Rico. </p> <p>Drawing on both the traditional and the modern, using arrangements that mix other Caribbean rhythms and styles, like bomba and merengue, and sizzling dance-floor charts with plena, Plena Libre has successfully liberated the genre to become a modern Salsa orquesta, topping the radio charts with one hit after another in Puerto Rico.</p> <p>Sharing the dance series stage will be DJ Le Spam & the Spam Allstars. Hailing from Miami, Spam brings the sounds of Brazilian, Haitian, African and Cuban instrumentation and culture together into an mélange of grooves blending improvisational electronic elements and turntables with Latin, funk, hip hop and dub. </p> <p>The Spam Allstars have been burning up stages and dance floors with dazzling Latin rhythms in Miami, Florida since the late ‘90s.</p> <p>The Santa Monica Pier is located at the intersection of Colorado Avenue and Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. The Pier strongly recommends walking, biking and using mass transit to get to the concerts as parking near the Pier is limited. The concerts will offer free valet bike parking to our patrons at the western entrance to the shows.</p> <p>For those who insist on driving, parking is available in beach parking lots located at 2030 Barnard Way and 1550 PCH, both accessible off Ocean Avenue south of the Pier. The 2030 lot is a short walk up the beach path from the Pier.</p> <p>For bus information, please visit www.bigbluebus.com and www.MTA.net or call 310-451-5444.</p> For more information about the concerts, visit <a href="http://www.twilightdance.org/">www.twilightdance.org</a> or call the Pier information line at 310-458-8900. </table>  <p></p></td> </tr> </table> </td> <td width="200"> <center> </center>  <table width="73" height="95" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="73" valign="top"><a href="http://www.readersjewelers.com/"><img src="/ssm_site/commerce/ReadersFineJewelers/ReadersFineJewery2.jpg" width="159" height="135" border="1"></a></td> </tr> </table>  <p align="left"> </p>  <h3 align="center"> </h3>  <p align="left"> </p>  <h3 align="center"><em><font color="#666666" face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><br> </font></em></h3> <h3 align="center"> </h3>  </div> <p align="left"> </p>  <h3 align="center"><font color="#666666" face="Courier New, Courier, mono"></font></h3>  <p align="left"> </p> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="700" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td width="691"><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"><table width="660" border="0"> <tr> <td valign="bottom" width="115" height="34"><a href="http://www.surfsantamonica.com/the_lookout.htm"><img src="/ssm_site/images/images-logos/icons-lookout.gif" alt="Lookout Logo footer image" width="115" height="26" border="0"></a> </td> <td valign="top" width="356" height="34"><font size="-1"><br> Copyright 1999-2008 surfsantamonica.com. 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