Buena Vista Social Club Tickets

Short Biography
The band are named after the Buena Vista Social Club which was a members club in Havana that held dances and musical activities, becoming a popular location for musicians to meet and play during the 1940s.
 
In the 1990s, nearly 40 years after the club was closed, it inspired a recording made by American guitarist Ry Cooder with traditional Cuban musicians, some of whom were veteran performers at the club during the height of its popularity. They went to Havana and assembled the best traditional musicians in Cuba to make an album of Son music, which had not been exposed internationally since pre-revolutionary days. Many of these musicians had been forgotten and some had even given up playing. The recording became an international success, and the ensemble performed with a full line-up in Amsterdam in 1998.
 
German director, Wim Wenders captured the performance on film, followed by a second concert in Carnegie Hall, New York City for a documentary that included interviews with the musicians conducted in Havana. Wenders's film, also called Buena Vista Social Club, was released to critical acclaim, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Documentary Feature" Best Documentary feature and winning numerous accolades including Best Documentary at the European Film Awards.
 
The success of both the album and film sparked a revival of international interest in traditional Cuban music and Latin American music in general. Some of the Cuban performers later released well-received solo albums and recorded collaborations with international stars from different musical genres.

In-depth Biography
Less a band than an assemblage of some of Cuba's most renowned musical forces, Buena Vista Social Club's origins lie with noted American guitarist Ry Cooder, who in 1996 traveled to Havana to seek out a number of legendary local musicians whose performing careers largely ended decades earlier with the rise of Fidel Castro. Recruiting the long-forgotten likes of singer Ibrahim Ferrer, guitarists/singers Compay Segundo and Eliades Ochoa, and pianist Rubén González, Cooder entered Havana's Egrem Studios to record the album Buena Vista Social Club; the project was an unexpected commercial and critical smash, earning a Grammy and becoming the best-selling release of Cooder's long career. In 1998 he returned to Havana with percussionist son Joaquim to record a solo LP with Ferrer; the sessions were captured on film by director Wim Wenders, who also documented sell-out Buena Vista Social Club live performances in Amsterdam and New York City. (Wenders' film, also titled simply Buena Vista Social Club, earned an Academy Award nomination in 2000.) The public's continued interest in Cuban music subsequently generated solo efforts from Segundo and González as well as a series of international live performances promoted under the Buena Vista Social Club aegis. A concert CD, At Carnegie Hall, drawn from the same triumphant show that Wenders featured in his documentary, was released in 2008. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi