Cuba 58 - Camerata Romeu

[Beagletorque]

Serendipity brought me to Camerata Romeu. Round the corner from the Casa we stayed in was a bar, not unusual as they are everywhere in Old Havana, and a regular was Armando, a piano player in his 70s. Think Les Dawson without the comedy element. One evening he was playing "Stardust", which happened to be my grandads theme tune so I knew how it went! Both my wife and I are keen amateur musicians and I had brought 32gb of sheet music in PDF files (a massive variety that I have collected over the years) with me to dish out in Cuba. I found the tune in question on my Hudl2 and went down to the bar to show him how it should go! He seemed very interested and started showing me all his own hand written tunes. I told him I had several thousand tunes in the pad and that he could have them if he had a computer to copy them too. On my return I explained to the casa owner that I had been to see Armando and that he could not understand about the music files as my Spanish was non existent. She said "yes he is awful, every time he plays a wrong note it goes right through me, WHAT DO YOU MEAN MUSIC FILES???". It turned out that see was a professional violinist who played with Camerata Romeu. She was desperate to get her hands on my PDF files and copied them to her computer and spent the next few hours exclaiming as she looked at what was there. Over the next few days musicians trecked in and out of the house copying them off her hard drive, my music mission was complete! She invited us to a private concert the following day at the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The music was astounding and all played from memory, an incredible feat the program was over 1hr long! I made a couple of recordings and have uploaded the files to "DropBox" feel free to listen to them (you may need to create a login if you don't have one, but it is safe!).

Church and Monastery of Saint Francis of Assisi - Original construction began in 1580 to create the headquarters for the Franciscan community in Cuba.



The most significant element of the Church is its bell tower.
At 42 meters it is the tallest in Havana, second highest in Cuba after Trinidad de Cuba’s Manaca Iznaga tower at 45 meters.
A statue of St. Francis of Assisi stood on the top of the bell tower but it was destroyed in 1846 by a cyclone.



Give me a boy and I'll..........



Camerata Romeu



A cheeky Salsa with percussion played on the Instrument bodies. This is a must listen!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjfe30wa28ej9v1/Cuba%20M%20A.mp3?dl=0

Directing the Music - Zenaida Romeu



Easy on the ears, easy on the eyes too!




Check out the other MP3 files here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f62h9hre1...dm7a?dl=0&s=so

[KeithL]

Re: Cuba 58 - Camerata Romeu

Serendipity brought me to Camerata Romeu. Round the corner from the Casa we stayed in was a bar, not unusual as they are everywhere in Old Havana, and a regular was Armando, a piano player in his 70s. Think Les Dawson without the comedy element. One evening he was playing "Stardust", which happened to be my grandads theme tune so I knew how it went! Both my wife and I are keen amature musicians and I had brought 32gb of sheet music in PDF files (a massive variety that I have collected over the years) with me to dish out in Cuba. I found the tune in question on my Hudl2 and went down to the bar to show him how it should go! He seemed very interested and started showing me all his own hand written tunes. I told him I had several thousand tunes in the pad and that he could have them if he had a computer to copy them too. On my return I explained to the casa owner that I had been to see Armando and that he could not understand about the music files as my Spanish was non existent. She said "yes he is awful, every time he plays a wrong note it goes right through me, WHAT DO YOU MEAN MUSIC FILES???". It turned out that see was a professional violinist who played with Camerata Romeu. She was desperate to get her hands on my PDF files and copied them to her computer and spent the next few hours exclaiming as she looked at what was there. Over the next few days musicians trecked in and out of the house copying them off her hard drive, my music mission was complete! She invited us to a private concert the following day at the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The music was astounding! I made a couple of recordings and have uploaded the files to "DropBox" feel free to listen to them (you may need to create a login if you don't have one, but it is safe!).

Church and Monastery of Saint Francis of Assisi - Original construction began in 1580 to create the headquarters for the Franciscan community in Cuba.



Give me a boy and I'll..........



Camerata Romeu



A cheeky Salsa with percussion played on the Instrument bodies. This is a must listen!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjfe30wa28ej9v1/Cuba%20M%20A.mp3?dl=0

Directing the Music - Zenaida Romeu



Easy on the ears, easy on the eyes too!




Check out the other MP3 files here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f62h9hre1...dm7a?dl=0&s=so

Like it - the music and the group!! Oh, and the photographs too...... You sure got around while you were there!

[raymondo]

Re: Cuba 58 - Camerata Romeu

Hi Beagletorque, nice set of photos, and I find it very interesting that quite a few musicians have copied your pdf files from the ladies computor. I have not listened to the music on dropbox as yet but will do so later. they always say that a picture tells a story, but info such as this, along with the photos make it all the better.