From our Bureau of Successful But Politically Ambivalent Cuban Transplants Who Receive No Attention From the Ministry of Truth
Cosette Justo Valdés, a talented musician trained in Cuba by Castro, Inc.’s Ministry of Culture and in Europe by non-enslaved mentors, is attracting a lot of attention in Canada’s classical music scene.
It’s difficult to find any information on her attitude toward Castro, Inc., or on whether she has defected or not.
One website says “Cosette maintains strong ties to her native Cuba, where she is celebrated as Honorary Director of the prestigious Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente in Santiago, Cuba’s musical heartland, which she led for 9 years.” The same website adds that “In Cuba Cosette has been invited to conduct all the symphony orchestras plus several chamber ensembles.”
This information seems to suggest that she still has ties to Castro, Inc.’s Ministry of Culture, which normally shuns every Cuban who is not a fervent communist or at least a convincing dissembler.
But in the article below she says that the music of Soviet composer Dimitri Shostakovich “resonates” with her because he was repressed by a dictatorship, and she knows and understands how awful dictatorships can be.
So, for now, at least, she hasn’t spoken out against the regime, or praised it. But it is odd that a superstar of this magnitude is not being constantly showcased by Granma, Prensa Latina, and other outlets of the Ministry of Truth. (At the risk of suffering a lethal aneurism or heart attack, Tres Fotutos searched the two above-mentioned propaganda rags and failed to find any articles on this rising star).
More to follow, perhaps . . .
From Yahoo News
Growing up in a small town in Cuba, Cosette Justo Valdés was a young musician with promise.
At the age of 18, a professor gave her the idea of becoming a conductor. It was an idea, she says, that seemed ambitious.
“For me what that was like to become an astronaut,” Valdés told CBC’s All Points West.
Years later, Valdés has managed to make that dream come true, having worked as a conductor in Cuba, Europe and Canada.
The latest chapter of her career has her serving as the artistic director of the Vancouver Island Symphony.
Valdés, who is a resident conductor with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, says the first time she visited Vancouver Island in 2020 she instantly felt at home.
“Vancouver Island … became my paradise and it proved to me that Canada has everything,” she said.
“There is even an island [near] Vancouver Island named Valdes,” she added, a joking nod to the Gulf Island in southwest B.C. named after Spanish Navy commander Cayetano Valdés y Flores.
The Nanaimo-based symphony is set to kick off its 29th season with a performance entitled Blooming, which includes a Beethoven piano concerto and a symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Valdés says the music of the Soviet-era Russian composer resonates with her.
“It speaks of the dictatorship that he was confronting,” she said.
“There is a lot there that I will talk about during the concert about what we know of repression, of dictatorship, and how the world right now is learning a lot about so many countries that suffer from dictatorship.”
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It sounds like she’s deliberately avoided being overtly pro or anti Castro dictatorship (better than, say, Ana de Armas), and that said dictatorship has therefore neither praised nor attacked her, while probably waiting to see if it can lure her into some semblance of acceptance and/or compromised position.