SeanFlora and Sarah Castro of Heartchaser

Portland songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist SeanFlora will share the stage with Austin-based singer-songwriter Sarah Castro of Heartchaser for an intimate double bill at Artichoke Music on Friday, September 18.

The evening brings together two artists whose work lives at the intersection of songwriting, collaboration, and emotional immediacy. For SeanFlora, the show offers a rare opportunity to step forward from a long career behind the scenes — as a studio music producer, collaborator, instrumentalist, and creative force — and present his own songs in a live setting. Though his fingerprints are familiar to many through his work with other artists, this performance centers SeanFlora’s own distinctive songwriting voice: literate, melodic, intimate, and quietly forceful.

For listeners drawn to artists like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and Leonard Cohen, SeanFlora’s songs offer that same pull toward language, character, wit, ache, and emotional detail. Much of this material does not currently live online, making the Artichoke performance one of the only ways to hear these songs as they are meant to be experienced: in the room, in real time.Joining him is Sarah Castro, the Austin-based songwriter behind Heartchaser, a band project that serves as the vehicle for her songs. Castro is currently traveling across the United States and will stop in Portland for this special appearance, performing material from an unreleased album in a stripped-down format. While Heartchaser’s recorded work presents the songs in their full-band form, this performance brings them closer to their source — voice, lyric, melody, and the emotional architecture of the songs themselves.

Castro will be joined onstage by SeanFlora during her set, creating a collaborative thread between the two performances and giving the evening the feeling of a true songwriter exchange rather than a conventional opener-headliner bill.

Additional guest musicians may join SeanFlora onstage, with details to be announced.

Set in the intimate listening-room environment of Artichoke Music, the show is designed for audiences who care about songs: where they come from, how they change in performance, and what happens when artists step outside the frame of their usual projects.

SeanFlora is a Portland-based music producer, multi-instrumentalist, collaborator, and singer-songwriter. Known for years of work in studios and on stages alongside other artists, SeanFlora brings a producer’s ear and a songwriter’s sense of detail to his own material. His songs draw from literary folk, classic songcraft, and emotionally direct storytelling — music for listeners who love the lyrical intelligence of Dylan, Costello, and Cohen, but want to discover it in a new voice, up close.

Sarah Castro is an Austin-based singer-songwriter and the creative force behind Heartchaser, a band project built around her songs. Heartchaser’s recorded music captures the full-band expression of Castro’s writing, while her solo performances reveal the songs in a more intimate and immediate form. On this Portland stop, Castro will perform material from an unreleased album, offering audiences an early glimpse into a new body of work before its official release.