I fell in love with Cuba. With the music, the culture, and mostly the people.After I first visited Havana in 2010, doing a week-long residency of workshops and collaborative performances with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, I knew I had to come back. 
In 2023 my dream came true. Collaborating with my long-time creative partner, Cathy Barbash, we were able to set up shop in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana with a room full of eager music students to work together to create all new compositions, surrounded by the museum’s vast collection of Cuban art as inspiration. We had five days to choose a painting, explore the different thoughts and feelings it inspired and turn those reactions into music. We also had to arrange, rehearse and perform the music in front of an audience of over 1,000 people. 

It seemed liked an impossible task and I wondered if I was crazy to attempt it. It was easily the most ambitious educational project I had ever done. It turned out to be one of the greatest experiences of my life. To witness and be part of the transformation these young students made – musically and personally – was deeply gratifying.

This film is an opportunity to share the journey of these amazing young people, and hopefully inspire other people to recognize their own creativity, and to not limit themselves as they search for ways to express and find themselves. 
Ted Nash, August 2025

Ten years ago, the U.S. and Cuba restored diplomatic relations. After my 3 decades of touring American performing artists throughout the world, I could finally collaborate with Cuban colleagues. Multi-Grammy winning saxophonist-composer Ted Nash and I created a jazz-art residency involved three Havana institutions: the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Escuela Nacional de Arte, and the Havana Jazz Plaza Festival. It was a groundbreaking project: never before had three Cuban arts organizations collaborated, had gifted high school students composed new music inspired by art, or had Cuban students and officials shared their thoughts so openly, and never before had both Cuban and American governments supported such a project. The project was so unique that it needed to be recorded and shared, so we engaged a local production company to film it, funding it ourselves.

We focus on the gifted young Cubans. They tell their musical “origin stories”, discuss the art that inspired them, and work on their compositions. In challenging conditions, they express not frustration or despair, but share their pride in Cuba’s musical education system, their great faith in themselves and their talents, and their optimistic ambitions for the future. They recount their joyful self-discovery during the workshop, and we see their new works premiered in the Museum courtyard to a standing room only audience. The Museum’s Curator of Cuban Art and Cuba’s leading still photographer also speak on camera about the importance and success of the project.

Our local producer, Vedado Films, was virtuosic in helping us address the various governmental and operational challenges. Multiple approvals were necessary, and the project could not happen until after the Trump administration ended. Cuba’s electricity shortage meant that we had to provide our own generators to operate equipment at the Museum, as their daily allotment barely met their own needs.

Lastly, the documentary offers a flashback to recent history when there was a ray of hope for the positive development of US-Cuba relations, and an antidote to the patronizing media and propaganda-driven narratives and stereotypes of Cuba.
Cathy Barbash, August 2025