WHAT MADE ME LOVE MUSIC: YALIL GUERRA, COMPOSER, INSTRUMENTALIST

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

I asked twenty musician friends to take a trip back down your memory lane and send me a short Facebook message with their answers. Here’s the first of many in a series

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As far as I can remember, my love for music came through different sources: at first my parents, who left in me a great love for popular music. I listened to them performing  many beautiful Cuban and Latin American songs…

A few years later, when I was about 13 years old, I traveled to East Berlin with them. One day they gave me an allowance.  Guess what was my request? I asked them to take me to a record store and I purchased as many classical vinyl albums as I could.

As part of that collection of albums I got Bach’s Mass in B minor, Handel’s Water Music… fifteen records that I purchased which were crucial to my developing a love of classical music.

Later, I started studying classical music in Havana, developing my knowledge and the desire to expand my mind in order to take in an infinite world of music that never ends. That’s why music is so magnificent, you never stop learning. That’s what fascinates me.

Yalil Guerra, Cuban-born composer

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”