In Wednesday’s (6/1) St. Petersburg Times (Florida), John Fleming reports that the Florida Orchestra will step “into a new realm of world politics that revolves around a nearby island that is at the center of one of this country’s most contentious relationships: Cuba. The orchestra announced Tuesday that it has been given the official approval for a multiyear cultural exchange program with the communist country. It is scheduled to begin Sept. 26-29, when a wind quintet made up of principal players from the orchestra will perform a concert and give master classes in Havana. That will be the first in a series of exchanges between the Florida Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba. The goal is for the full orchestra to perform in Cuba as early as the 2012-13 season. … Music director Stefan Sanderling first came up with the idea to have the Florida Orchestra go to Cuba. ‘When he brought it up a couple of years ago, we were not in a position to absorb a project of that magnitude,’ [Florida Orchestra President Michael] Pastreich said. ‘But the organization has become stronger over the past few years. Now a project like this makes perfect sense.’ For Pastreich, a principal aim of the cultural exchange is to deepen the orchestra’s relationship with the bay area’s Cuban-American community.”
Photo by Lori Ballard
Posted June 1, 2011
