Like so many other families in the 1950’s and 1960’s, my father’s family fled Cuba during Castro’s rise to power. In the United States, as is true for many immigrants, my father struggled to negotiate his dual identities as both Cuban and American; the violent circumstances that necessitated his family’s departure only made this more challenging.
My parents met in Florida, and later moved to New Hampshire to raise a family. Growing up in rural New Hampshire, I rarely encountered other people of Latin Heritage. Because of this disconnect, I didn’t see myself as part of the Latin community. It wasn't until moving to a more culturally diverse community in New York City and developing friendships with other second generation Latinos & Latinas that I finally started to think of myself as Cuban and began to explore that part of my heritage. I began taking Spanish lessons and engrossing myself in Cuban culture. This cultural education made me aware of how little classical music from Latin America is represented in the classical music canon. In the six years of conservatory training with rigorous work in Italian, German, French, and English diction and repertoire, Spanish repertoire was and is still not part of the standard curriculum.