“A little musical and geopolitical history was made Friday night when Enrique Perez Mesa, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, made his U.S. debut not far from the historic cigar factory districts that constitute some of the deepest ties between the two countries,” writes John Fleming in Saturday’s (5/12) Tampa Bay Times. “In the first of three concerts this weekend, the Cuban maestro led the Florida Orchestra at Morsani Hall of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. It is part of a multiyear cultural exchange between the orchestra and Cuban musical institutions that began last fall with a wind quintet from the orchestra giving a concert in Havana. Perez Mesa brought a rich lode of Cuban music to the orchestra in a program heavy with rhythm, opening with a propulsive performance of what felt like a minor masterpiece by Carlos Farinas, Preludio para Penthesilea.… The orchestra revisited Cubanitis, a piece by James Lewis that it premiered 14 years ago, featuring, then as now, principal timpanist John Bannon as the soloist.… Among those in the audience were about 80 members of Sisters Across the Straits, a group affiliated with the League of Women Voters of Florida that does people-to-people cultural exchanges with Cuba.”
Posted May 14, 2012
