Cuba’s Ambassador of Music

As a child growing up in Cuba, it was always assumed that Zenaida Romeu would pursue a career in music. After all, if you’re a Kennedy, don’t you go into politics? And if you’re a Rothschild, won’t you go into banking and wine?

It was no different for the children of Cuba’s first family of music. But exactly what kind of music young Zenaida would play was anyone’s guess. Would she embrace danzon, like her great uncle Antonio Maria Romeu, or jazz like her uncle Armando, the father of the island’s jazz movement?

Or would she become a band director like her grandfather Armando, a classical pianist like her mother Zenaida or a music teacher like her cousin Gonzalo? Eventually, she decided to follow them all, fusing the disparate disciplines into a uniquely Cuban sound for the eight-piece, all-female string orchestra she directs, the Camerata Romeu.

“We have a national music, an autonomous music,” Romeu says. “[So] in addition to doing Bach, in addition to doing whatever classic, universal music--we also include in our concerts the knowledge of the music that was born on the island.”

The Cuban music the group plays, she says, is influenced by rumbas and mambos and salsa. But “it’s pure music; it’s music to listen to, not to dance to. Not all the music made on the island is for dancing. You can also move other parts of your body, the internal parts.”

Following successful tours in Europe and Latin America, and just as the Pope’s Havana visit throws a spotlight on all things Cuban, Camerata Romeu is scheduled to make its U.S. debut this afternoon in the Sundays at Four series at the L.A. County Museum of Art. That will be followed by a sold-out performance Tuesday, under the auspices of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in Gindi Auditorium at the University of Judaism in Bel-Air and concerts Thursday morning at CalArts in Valencia and Thursday night at Cal State Northridge.

Although the group gets a lot of attention for its all-female makeup, women’s-only ensembles are not that unusual in Cuba, Romeu says. Besides, Romeu’s main goal in forming the group four years ago was to bring together talented young musicians; the fact they were all women was pure chance.

“I was interested in showing the [talent] level of the young people in Cuba,” Romeu said by phone from Havana. “I thought that it would be interesting to show that there were young people ready, prepared to get together and make music.

“In the case of women, there were a lot of young [female] graduates from the school of [music], a phenomenon I hadn’t encountered [elsewhere].”

The result is a chamber orchestra of eight pieces--four violins, two violas, a cello and a bass--with just one musician older than 30. And their audiences tend to mirror that demographic.

“We have a very special following,” says Hilda Barrio, the group’s manager. “We’ve had a very good reception among young people. About 90% of our audiences are made up of young people between the ages of 20 and 30. And that’s very interesting because it means a lot for the development of this kind of music.”

Based in La Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis in the historic section of Old Havana, the women play a repertory that’s as challenging as it is diverse, and, based on their one CD, “La Bella Cubana” on the Spanish Magic Music label, one that is indeed marked by engaging Latin rhythms and a light touch, despite its seriousness. Traditional works by composers such as Handel and Britten share Camerata Romeu’s playlist with contemporary Cuban and Latin American compositions, especially pieces written for the group by such composers as Arturo Marquez of Mexico and Cubans Beatriz Corona, Lopez Gavilan and Jose Maria Vitier.

Today’s concert, which will be aired live on KUSC-FM (91.5), will feature primarily Cuban composers while the program for Tuesday’s Philharmonic-sponsored event will be more traditional, including Britten’s “Simple Symphony” and a sinfonia by Albinoni, as well as “Homenaje a Gismonti” by Marquez, famed Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s “Cuatro Canziones Remotas” and works by Astor Piazzolla and Ernesto Lecuona.

The aim, says Romeu, is to present a panorama of Cuba’s rich, if largely unacknowledged, classical musical culture.

“What they excel at is Latin American classical music, especially Cuban classical music,” says Al Nodal, general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and an instrumental figure in arranging the ensemble’s L.A. visit.

Nodal saw the group in Cuba on a recent trip and came away thinking “everything about them is mesmerizing.” But perhaps most mesmerizing was the fact the women were playing serious new music, a genre few associate with Cuba.

“That they’ve been able to eek out a little place for themselves in classical music is incredible,” he says. “Because you know everyone thinks Cuba is just congo drums.”

“The rest of the world thinks Cuban music is of a very singular form,” agrees Barrio. “They think the music is just . . . salsa. Some people think this [classical] side has been abandoned. However, there has been a development of very young composers from the ‘60s and ‘70s who have produced a very rich music and who have followed a tradition of cultured music, but adjusted it to the values of contemporary music.”

Cuba’s musical tradition owes much to the legacy of the Romeu family, beginning with Zenaida’s great uncle Antonio, who helped popularize the danzon movement in the early years of the 20th century. That popular style of simple instrumental dance music for orchestras in turn influenced composers of the traditional Cuban dance music more closely associated with boleros, canciones and guarachas.

The next generation was led by Armando Romeu, the musical director of Cuba’s most important jazz band. Armando started as a saxophone player, but at his prime his band was headlining Havana’s famous Tropicana nightclub and recording with the likes of Nat King Cole. And while Armando’s niece Zenaida may be the best-known of the current generation, she’s hardly the only member of the family still making music.

Two brothers are musicians in Cuba while a cousin plays with a successful rock band in Miami, and other family members are parts of music groups in Tampa, and Texas. And the next wave is waiting in the wings--Zenaida’s youngest son, 10-year-old Claudio, is already quite an accomplished pianist.

Zenaida, who also is a pianist, studied chorale and orchestra direction at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte, where her cousin Gonzalo was among her teachers.

“This tradition of my family, I feel a little like I’ve inherited it,” says Romeu.

And although the orchestra’s stay in Los Angeles will be a brief one, it nonetheless provides a vital test for the group, insists Barrio.

“This is a very important time in our growth,” she said. “We have to see if we can please a critical audience to see where we are and where we can go. To see what we’re doing right and where we’re mistaken.”

For Romeu, however, the camerata’s international performances are a little more than that. Each concert presents another opportunity to share a little bit of Cuba with the audience and, by extension, a little bit of herself.

“I feel as if I’m an ambassador of Cuban culture,” she says. “I hope that everyone . . . learns a little more about Cuban culture from the music that we play. [Our performances have] been an open window to Cuban culture, a more complete view of what Cuban culture is. Who are we Cubans? What are we like? How do we feel? How do we think?”

It’s a role that can be controversial, she concedes, especially when it comes to bridging the gap between the U.S. and Cuba. But she expects her message assures a good connection. “I’ve never had a problem anywhere with trying to promote my culture,” she says. “When one has a real culture, a real aesthetic, that transcends any other problem.”

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CAMERATA ROMEU, Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5900 Wilshire Blvd. Date: Today, 4 p.m. Price: Free. Phone: (213) 485-6873. Also appearing Tuesday at Gindi Auditorium, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, 8 p.m., $25, (213) 850-2000; Thursday at Roy O. Disney Recital Hall, CalArts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, 10 a.m., free, (805) 255-1050; and also Thursday at Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center (in the Student Union), Plummer at Zelzah, 8 p.m., free, (818) 677-5768.