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Herald Staff Report. Posted on Sun, Jun. 09, 2002 in
The Miami Herald
HAVANA - It was not exactly Spanish that Key West conductor Sebrina María
Alfonso used to direct the members of Cuba's Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional
during rehearsals.
''Ya-TE-da-da. Ya-TE-da-da. I want you to get the dynamic of the piece,''
Alfonso said in English during a morning rehearsal as the players wrestled with
the 16th-notes in a piece by American composer Joan Tower.
The Spanish-language skills of the first Cuban American to conduct Cuba's
Sinfónica since the rise of Fidel Castro may have been basic, but the
occasion was historic.
The 43-year-old daughter of a family whose members hopscotched between two
islands -- Cuba and Key West -- for more than a century until Castro came to
power was now a musical ambassador with a massive challenge.
''What I am showing them are the expectations the rest of the world will
have,'' she said.
Alfonso came to the island to conduct the 80-plus members of the Sinfónica,
shepherding Cuba's premier symphony through five days of rehearsals culminating
in a June 2 concert at Havana's Amadeo Roldán Theater.
Noticeably absent from the Cuban lineup: a number of seasoned musicians
between the ages of 25 and 45. Alfonso was told they are under contract to
perform with other symphonies in Mexico and elsewhere.
Cuba's orchestra, she said, is "missing a generation.''
Accompanying Alfonso on the trip to Havana: Texas-based cellist Zuill Bailey
and about 40 patrons of the Key West Symphony Orchestra who paid $3,500 each to
raise money for the Keys orchestra and to partake in a deluxe -- and largely
government-chaperoned -- week of sightseeing in the cities of Havana, Trinidad
and Pinar del Río.
For most, it was their first visit to Cuba. Some toted toiletries and music
supplies to distribute. Others carried tiny bars of soap in their pockets. Many
wondered what the half-dozen security men wandering around their high-end hotel,
some with earpieces, were looking for.
VIOLENCE IN PARK
On the first morning that Alfonso awakened in the fabled city she had heard
about all her life but never glimpsed, the view from her window offered an
eyeful of Havana. Three flights below her hotel room, a black man in Parque
Central was being kicked in the groin by a police officer as several other men,
attired in the gray uniforms and berets of the city's tourist police, looked on.
''That,'' Alfonso said, 'was my 'Welcome to Cuba.' ''
While Alfonso experienced things that gave her pause over her eight-day
trip, she also met people who gave her hope.
''They are asking for so much stuff from us,'' Alfonso said, sitting in her
hotel room in Havana's Hotel Golden Tulip Parque Central, eating a late
afternoon lunch. "They want us to bring more music, more musicians, more
instruments. They want to come to Key West.''
Around Alfonso's neck was a gold cross that she tried to downplay for fear
of appearing ostentatious.
''I don't want to offend anyone,'' she explained.
SEEKING CONTACT
Within days of Alfonso's arrival, her Cuban counterparts, hungry for contact
with the outside world and lamenting a lack of Internet access, were asking when
she would return.
''Soon,'' a percussionist said during a question-and-answer session
translated by a visiting American. "You must come more.''
Alfonso was already planning her next visit.
Although Key West is only 90 miles away, the Cuban musicians looked upon the
other island as if it were a universe apart.
''I want to go there. It's very beautiful, I hear,'' a violinist remarked
wistfully after a rehearsal.
Preparing for the concert, however, was more of a challenge than
anticipated. The program included pieces by Samuel Barber, Vaughan Williams and
Maurice Ravel -- compositions with which most of the musicians seemed
unfamiliar.
''They did very well, but it was hard,'' Alfonso said after her first day of
rehearsal. "Maybe this is more music than they are used to doing.''
RAGGED BEGINNING
The players had rhythm but lacked tempo. A handful showed up late for
rehearsal, held each day on the poorly air-conditioned stage of the Roldán.
A few didn't come at all.
Alfonso at first found the lack of discipline ''almost insulting'' but then
began to understand how the Cuban musicians operated.
Still, she insisted that practice begin each day at 9 a.m. sharp.
After each session, an administrator removed from the stands the sheet music
that Alfonso brought with her to Cuba for the Sinfónica players to learn.
Orchestra members got their first look at the compositions moments after the
first rehearsal began.
''It was like they were guarding it,'' Alfonso said.
CORNER ENSEMBLES
Paid a pittance in Cuban pesos for their symphony jobs, some of the
musicians said they apply their skills toward more lucrative activities --
strumming for tourists as part of ''traditional'' ensembles parked on every
corner of old Havana.
Their instruments were well worn. A bass sported a hole, strings were
plucked past their prime, glue was coming undone, a used horn that Alfonso
brought with her to donate was stripped for a part. Soft music cases, not the
more protective hard ones favored by professional musicians in the United
States, were slung across their backs as they headed home by bus.
About half of the string section didn't look up when playing.
''The actual job of playing in an orchestra felt like it was more of a job,
not a passion, for them,'' Alfonso said after her return to Key West. "It
was very emotionally exhausting, because I had to try very hard to pull them to
the emotional center of the pieces. There seemed to be a wall between that kind
of communication in the music. By the end, though, our working ethics started to
jell.''
Ioana Pérez Nuñez, a talented 18-year old violinist who had
previously performed with a youth orchestra in Boston, said she wanted to return
to the United States to study. It was an aspiration that Alfonso vowed to
facilitate.
''She said that in the States, they taught her to play from her heart,'' she
said.
The musicians, polite and cordial, seemed eager to please their American
guests.
BOUQUET OF LILIES
The Sinfónica's director dispatched a bouquet of white lilies to the
maestra after the first day of practice.
The evening before, at an invitation-only reception, members of the Sinfónica's
string section shimmied at the back of the Havana Club Museum to Cuban folk
tunes.
As the Americans snapped up mojitos from serving trays, the Cuban players
did the same and later piled their plates high with shrimp, fried chicken and
cheese wrapped in ham, some returning for seconds and thirds.
During the second day's rehearsal, a young woman approached the maestra.
Squeezing Alfonso's hand, the woman explained that there was ''much pressure''
on the musicians playing for the Key West conductor.
RELUCTANT TO MEET
While the official government newspaper Granma touted the concert, to which
Castro was invited by the Sinfónica's director, Alfonso wasn't eager for
a meeting with a man of whom her Key West abuelita Mimie didn't approve.
''It would be weird,'' Alfonso said. "If you are in their presence, you
wonder why. Are you doing something that will affect some people's lives?''
Cellist Bailey, who held several classes after practice, was greeted by his
Cuban peers with the kind of adoration usually reserved for rock stars. Dressed
in crisp jeans and sporting leather shoes, Bailey exuded a coveted confidence.
''What does it mean to be a soloist in the United States?'' two symphony
players asked.
''I travel around and play different places,'' Bailey replied.
The pair beamed and pressed for more details.
As it turned out, el comandante was a no-show; the American visitors
distributed more than 20 boxes of school supplies, toothpaste and other
toiletries; and on the group's last evening, the Sinfónica's director
almost lost his temper when the manager of a tourist restaurant showed one of
his assistants the exit during a ''farewell dinner'' held opposite a
centuries-old cathedral.
Hours earlier, as the Sinfónica performed Ravel's searing La Valse --
a piece set during a time of revolution, in which a subtext of violence and
passion overcomes a lilting facade -- tears flowed down Cuban and American
cheeks.
No words were necessary. | 
