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| The student, faculty string ensemble from the Escuela de Arte Benny More in Cienfuegos, Cuba play for U.S. tour goers. It was an honor to be at the school among the students, faculty, artists, art work and music. |
On my birthday—one of those markers that sneaks up on you and then lingers—I found myself stepping off a tour bus in Cienfuegos, Cuba, along with twenty fellow travelers and a pair of patient guides who had mastered the art of moving a small crowd through a large country without ever seeming hurried. The bus sighed as it came to rest, doors folding open, and we spilled out into the warm, slightly salted air of a coastal city that carries itself with quiet dignity.
There was nothing ceremonial about the stop. No banners, no speeches, no sense that anything had been arranged for our benefit beyond the courtesy of being allowed in.
Ahead stood a low, practical building—the Escuela de Arte Benny Moré, though at that moment I did not yet know the name I would later struggle to recall. It looked less like an institution than a place where work happened every day, the kind of place where talent is shaped rather than displayed.
Inside, the air shifted. The light softened. Hallways filled with red, white and blue clad students of all ages, opened into rooms where the walls carried the marks of many hands—paintings, studies, attempts, corrections. This was not a gallery. It was a living workshop.
Somewhere deeper in the building, music was already in motion. We were guided into a modest room, the kind that in another life might have been a classroom or meeting space. A handful of chairs, music stands set without ceremony, a piano waiting quietly at the back.
And there they were: a small string ensemble, students and instructors together, already poised in that half-second of stillness before sound begins. No announcement. No introduction. Just the lift of a bow. And then—music. It was not polished for an audience, which is to say it was real. The kind of playing that carries both discipline and hunger. A violin leaned into a phrase as if testing its edges. The upright bass grounded the room with a steady, human pulse. The piano threaded through it all, less a soloist than a quiet conspirator. You could hear instruction inside the performance, and performance inside the instruction—the two inseparable.
We sat in a loose semicircle, travelers who had expected to observe and instead found ourselves listening. Really listening. Even our group, not known for silence, seemed to understand that this was not something to interrupt with commentary or cameras. It was a gift offered without fuss, and accepted the same way. I remember thinking—not in words, but in the way a thought settles—that this was among the best birthday celebrations I've received outside of family. No one in that room knew it was El Jefe's birthday. No one needed to. The moment didn’t belong to me; that was precisely why it felt like it did.
When the final note dissolved, there was a pause—not the polite pause before applause, but the natural one that follows something complete. Then we clapped, of course, because we are who we are. The players smiled, a little shyly, as if surprised by the reaction to something that, for them, was simply part of the day’s work.
We filed back out the way we had come, returning to the bus, to the road, to the rest of the itinerary that would soon blur with the others. But that room in Cienfuegos has held its shape in memory longer than most places I have deliberately tried to remember. Years later, the name of the school slipped away before returning again, as names do. The music, however, never left. Sadly, as the world has turned a foul orange, I wonder if the school has endured. I'm sad to follow up.
