The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, a student-run organization at Harvard College, will leave for Havana on May 27 for its first visit to Cuba in its 203-year history. In a tour entitled An Ode to Cuba, 86 members of the HRO — including Andover native Jacob Shack '14 — will participate in four joint performances with local orchestras and choirs in Havana, Pinar del Río and Matanzas.
These public concerts, given free of charge, are scheduled for May 29, May 30, May 31 and June 2.
Under the baton of Music Director Federico Cortese, members will bring music to underprivileged populations in Havana through exchange with young musicians in the community. The program follows a formal invitation from the Cuban Institute of Music and an approved performance license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Repertoire will include a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in the Teatro Nacional of Havana in collaboration with the Coro Nacional de Cuba, directed by Digna Guerra. A significant masterpiece of cultural influence, Beethoven's Ninth champions the theme of Universal Brotherhood in the work's famous finale, "Ode to Joy" - a message central to the tour's mission of cultural and musical exchange, according to a release from the group. This experience aims to celebrate recent Cuban-American relations through the arts, which have set an appropriate stage for these performances.
Classical music took root in Cuba's artistic landscape following Russian influences after the Cuban Revolution, and though spirit and enthusiasm for the genre has endured, resources and exposure to music from the outside world have declined since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
"As a proponent of outreach through music education, the HRO intends to use our own music to connect with, teach, and learn from the Cuban public through our performances and other interactions," says Clare Whitehead, junior cellist and president of the orchestra.
