The Minnesota Symphony Orchestra is holding concerts at the Cuban Music and Record Industry Festival, Cubadisco 2015, currently underway in Havana.

For the first time in eighty years, the renowned orchestra is visiting Havana for an opening concert at Havana's National Theater on Friday which included an all-Beethoven program, consisting of the Egmont Overture Opus 84 and the Heroic and Fantasy Symphony No. 3 for Piano, Choir and Orchestra, Opus 80. Renowned Cuban pianist Frank Fernandez, the Cuban Vocal Leo Choir and the Cuban National Choir performed under the direction of Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä,

The second concert scheduled for May 16 also at the National Theater consists of Danzón by Cuban composer Alejandro Garcia Caturla, Symphonic Dances of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story and one of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suites. The Minnesota Orchestra is also having exchanges with students of the National Arts School and the Higher Arts Institute (ISA), also known as Cuban Arts University. Minnesota Orchestra musicians rehearsed with the Youth Orchestra of Cuba’s Amadeo Roldan Music School at the National Theater on Friday, May 15.