Havana, November 12 (RHC)-- A display of more than 16,000 fireworks will close next Saturday, November 16, the gala for the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana, confirmed composer Frank Fernández.

The relevant Cuban pianist is part of this initiative, prepared together with designer Georges Wade and other experts from the Canadian Fireworks FX company to celebrate one of the oldest cities on this continent.

The complexity of the proposal lies in the attempt to integrate pyrotechnics into music, as one more instrument, and in the fact that the composer avoided creating a primitive, that is, easy piece; for him it was more important to transmit elements of his country's cultural identity.

Although he was not born in Havana, the capital was a dream to be conquered and once here, when he was only 15 years old, it opened up an almost infinite horizon of possibilities and became a school for the musician who would later win a scholarship to study at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Russia.

Fernández has been an arranger, co-arranger, artistic advisor, producer and composer of works for cinema, novels, newsreels, spots, serials, plays and dance.

"I believe that music has to communicate intense emotions and that the most important thing is that it be good music," he said in his studio, in front of his piano Steinway & Sons, an accomplice to numerous recordings.

I never thought that I would feel so happy to put music to fireworks and the truth is that it was not on  purpose, it was just by mere coincidence, because that was not in my dreams.  

"Havana has propitiated everything," considered the father of the contemporary Cuban piano school.

"The light of Havana for me is very special. The miracle of Eusebio Leal with his work restoring the historic center of Old Havana, fills me with pleasure, as well as the cultural diversity of this city, something that few capitals have, not only from Latin America, in the world," he said.