Classical Music Rocks in 19th Century Cuba

Live on Zoom Music Historian Jeffrey Engel: Wednesday, Aug. 31: 2 to 3 p.m. Zoom participants: Visit the library’s website on Aug. 31 and click on the Zoom to Event link. Please join us for another musically enchanting afternoon with Jeffrey Engel as he explores the ways in which American music has been influenced by the Cuban repertory. Cuba has a longer history of art music than any other island nation in the Caribbean. Music making at first was centered
around cathedrals in Santiago and Havana as far back as the early 17th century. Two hundred years later, Cuba was being greatly influenced by European Romanticism. Opera was thriving as were numerous music societies offering solo and chamber music. Cuba would produce several generations of talented composers who would instill their music with native rhythms and dances. They would influence American composers who visited Cuba or heard the country’s music on
the radio. Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin are among several Americans who wrote works influenced by music from Cuba. Jeffrey Engel was recently selected by Litchfield Magazine as one of the fifty most influential people in Litchfield County. For 15 years he has been giving lectures devoted to music history in libraries, colleges and retirement communities throughout Connecticut. His preference is for 19th and 20th century music ranging from the wonderful to the wacky in operatic, symphonic and chamber works. Subjects are always placed in a historical context in order to show how non-musical developments impacted the lives and creativity of composers. After graduating college with a Bachelor of Arts degree (major in music), Engels settled in Paris where he resided for fourteen years. There he studied cello, art history (at the Sorbonne) and earned diplomas in the French language.
As a cellist, he taught in municipal conservatories, played all over France with operatic, symphonic and ballet orchestras, as well as with chamber music ensembles.