Performing New Music in Cuba: Manuel Duchesne Cuzan and “Nuestro Tiempo”

Abstract

Historical accounts of Cuban music after the 1960s converge on recognizing a group of musicians as key actors in the emergence and development of an avant-garde approach to contemporary art music. While they were predominantly composers, all narratives emphasise the role of the orchestra conductor Manuel Duchesne Cuzán as a crucial figure in disseminating avant-garde discourses to national audiences. As conductor of the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra and founder of the ensemble “Conjunto Instrumental Nuestro Tiempo”, his career included several premieres of new music during the sixties, the seventies, and the eighties. This paper examines this musical trajectory through historical and historiographical approaches, as well as the analysis of a documentary corpus to illustrate the contribution of performers to the process of meaning-making in repertoire and aesthetic movements.