Project Overview
Traveling through towns, villages, and backroads, Founder Lance Bendiksen sets out to uncover New Mexico through the songs, stories, and traditions of its musical artists.
The Big New-Mex Review opens with a sweeping cinematic journey across New Mexico’s vast high desert terrain and endless horizons, framed by the voice of narrator and Academy Award winner Wes Studi, grounding the story in the spirit and legacy of the land and its people.
What begins as an exploration of place becomes something more intimate, a search for meaning through the people who live, create, and endure within it.
Structured as a four-part documentary series, the project moves from wide-open landscapes into adobe-lined streets and remote mountain towns, revealing artists shaped by Indigenous, Hispanic, and Anglo musical traditions. Their songs reflect lineage, resistance, memory, and lived experience, captured through both performance and personal story.
The Live Concert Series brings these voices together in shared performances events across New Mexico. Each concert includes community lectures and educational workshops designed to engage local audiences, students, and emerging artists, extending the project into cultural education and exchange.
Since 2025, Co-Director and Producer Lance Bendiksen and Co-Director and Cinematographer James Chressanthis have been developing a cinematic portrait of New Mexico through a four-episode documentary series and live performance framework.
The Stories
The Big New-Mex Review embraces a range of cultural stories, from Nasario García, a 90-year-old author and historian who shares his reflections on music and oral history from the 1930s, to modern musicians overcoming devastating personal struggles. The Review explores the resilience of culture, fueled by music.
Whether it is an Indigenous blues guitarist in Nambe Pueblo walking down a dirt road, speaking about how his family has lived on the land since the beginning of time, or artists in high desert towns who talk of inspiration shaped by the majesty of the landscape, these stories create a powerful mosaic,one where music is a constant process of exploration, healing, and the glue of community.