The Ensemble Habana XXI, directed by the young Cuban director César Eduardo Ramos and the art direction by the French maestro Nathalie Marin, invites us to take a walk through the Prado Promenade, to sit for a while on the Malecón, and to stroll through the streets of Havana at dusk.

The novel group assumes the contrandanza Tarde en La Habana - originally written for piano by the notable composer and pianist José María Vitier -, in a memorable and intelligent version made by bassoonist Osmany Hernández, who gives evidence of his craft and accurate handling of orchestration, qualities that we were already noticing and, we continue with great interest, from the Cuban zarzuela cycle that he made together with the counter-tenor and cultural promoter, Ubail Zamora.

In the work, the moments dedicated to the wind section stand out, specifically the flute solo is, in my opinion, a significant contribution by Hernández, giving a shine to that romantic and nostalgic atmosphere of the twilight in the city of Havana, and in which the generational spirit of the original piece is not betrayed. Another success is to have given a leading role in the subject to the wind section and percussion instruments, which allows coherence, a marked contrast and strength in the final result.

The home-made video Tarde en La Habana, by the Ensemble Habana XXI, is the result of the social isolation caused by the hygienic-sanitary contingency of the Covid-19 in Cuba, and in it the performers give us a sometimes vibrant sound, in other nostalgic passages, which is always Cuban.

With this material the young group shows its unquestionable talent, meticulously adjusting a theme, in a work different from the usual one in which the musicians naturally fit in live.
According to the conductor, it was a great challenge for the arranger to transfer the essence of the original piece to the version in a coherent, fresh, intelligent and innovative way.

"In this version, the strings were assembled to function as the base along with the percussion of the piece and, in the case of the wind instruments, because of their richer timbre, they provide a greater contrast to the strings, which have a very homogeneous sound", he states.

The social distancing caused by the Covid-19 led these restless performers to propose the realization of a new project that demanded work that was different from the daily routine of live concerts, since they had to adopt new forms of making art in order to continue with their projects that had been interrupted by the health emergency and, in this way, maintain contact with the public through social media.

"It was difficult because each musician sent their audio files independently, so there was no way to listen to the others previously-he warns us and goes into detail about this-, for example, wind instruments can change pitch and intonation according to the format or in a given chord as is the case with the oboe, bassoon and clarinet, very small adjustments that are easily made live, but this was not the case."

This young man describes the realization of the video as a great challenge, which was done in a homemade way and with elementary knowledge of the subject, but with a great desire to deliver a decent and consistent visual result.

"The oboist, we affectionately call Fonky (he refers to Jorge Daniel Ruiz), was in charge of the mixing and mastering and, for my part, I was responsible for editing the video. It was my first time doing a job like this and it took me several days to develop it."

"We can enjoy in the video the moment in which each instrumentalist has their own role, for example, almost at the beginning there is a passage with a really complicated flute solo, maybe in the piano it is a little easier, but it was a very big achievement for our flutist and we left the whole screen to him to show off. That's how we conceived the visuality of this proposal.’’