Ernesto Lecuona stands out as perhaps the foremost Latin musical figure of the early twentieth century, having produced hundreds of compositions that encompass enduring standards such as “Malagueña,” “Andalucia” (also known as “The Breeze and I”), “Siempre en Mi Corazon,” “Comparsa,” and “Noche Azul,” alongside operettas, ballets, and a full opera. He entered the world in Havana’s Guanabacoa district in 1896 and first gained recognition as a concert pianist. A sister provided his initial piano instruction—all three of his siblings pursued music—and he later trained at the National Conservatory in Havana before studying with Maurice Ravel in Paris. At twenty-one he made his New York debut, rapidly emerging as a concert phenomenon whose piano recordings ultimately filled five volumes. Although he had already begun writing songs during his piano studies, Lecuona secured copyrights for two of the Latin repertoire’s most celebrated pieces, “Malagueña” and “Andalucia,” in the late 1920s. The ensemble he led, originally called the Palau Brothers Cuban Orchestra and later renamed the Lecuona Cuban Boys, toured the United States throughout the 1930s and achieved widespread acclaim. During the early 1930s he supplied scores for four MGM films and received an Academy Award nomination for the title song of the 1942 picture Always in My Heart. Appointed cultural attaché at the Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1943, Lecuona largely withdrew from performing after World War II, choosing instead to tend his farm in Cuba. He departed his homeland in 1960, condemning Castro’s revolution and pledging not to perform again until communism had been removed from the island. He apparently kept that pledge, never appearing professionally thereafter, and passed away in 1963 during a vacation in the Canary Islands.
