BIOGRAPHY
Renesito Avich is a Cuban-born musician, vocalist, and composer who has spent his life in deep conversation with the roots of his island's music. Raised in a tradition where rhythm is a mother tongue, he learned to sing before he could fully explain what a son montuno was, he simply felt it, in the way the body moves before the mind catches up.
His voice carries the warmth of Santiago's streets and the precision of a musician who studied his craft seriously blending son, changüí, bolero and nueva trova into a sound that feels both timeless and urgently alive. Now based in New York City, Renesito brings the spirit of Cuba to one of the world's most electric stages, bridging two worlds through melody, memory, and a deep reverence for where it all began.
His discography has earned three Latin Grammy nominations: Best Traditional Tropical Album for Café con Cariño (2022), Best Instrumental Album for Tres(2023), and Best Tropical Song in collaboration with Rafael "El Pollo" Brito (2024). In 2025, he made his Broadway debut in Buena Vista Social Club at the Schoenfeld Theatre, earning a Special Tony Award in 2025 alongside the show’s full band and a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album in 2026.
Tonight's concert is not just a performance, it is an invitation. An invitation to step inside the music, feel its stories, and let Cuban sound do what it has always done best: make strangers feel like family.
THE EXPERIENCE
What you are about to hear is a living archive,
songs that have been sung in sugar fields, in Havana cabarets, in kitchens and on porches, passed from voice to voice across generations
✦ Tonight they belong to this room ✦
You may not know the words. That's okay.
The music will find you anyway.
PROGRAM
1. EL MANISERO - The Peanut Vendor · Pregón / Son Cubano
Written in 1928 by Moisés Simons, this iconic pregón — a street vendor's cry turned into song — became the first Cuban recording to sell a million copies worldwide. It is the song that introduced the planet to Cuban music. Tonight, it opens the door.
2-3. CAFÉ CON CARIÑO - SIESTA KEY - Written & composed by Renesito Avich
Café Con Cariño is an original song born from the simplest, most human ritual: sharing a cup of coffee with someone you love. In Cuban culture, coffee is never just coffee, it is a gesture, a pause, a moment of genuine care offered without conditions. Renesito wrote this piece as a tribute to that quiet tenderness, wrapping it in the warmth of son and the unhurried breath of a bolero. The melody moves slowly, on purpose, because some feelings shouldn't be rushed.Siesta Key flows directly from it, like a second thought after a deep exhale. Also an original composition, this song captures the sensation of suspension, that floating place between two worlds, two homes, two versions of yourself. Written from the experience of a Cuban musician living in New York, it holds the beauty of the in-between: not homesick, not settled, but quietly at peace with both. The trumpet here doesn't announce — it confides.
4. EL CARRETERO - The Cart Driver · Son Cubano
A beloved guajira from the Cuban countryside, the story of a humble cart driver whose joy needs no fortune to exist. Composed by Guillermo Portabales, El Carretero is one of those songs that makes Cubans everywhere feel an immediate, undeniable pang of home. Pure and beautiful.
5. SERENADE
A moment filled with music, love, and gratitude, just for you.
6. GUARAREY DE PASTORA - Roberto Baute · Changüí
This is where the roots go deepest. Changüí is one of Cuba's oldest musical forms born in the mountains of Guantánamo, raw and rhythmically complex, the ancestor of son. You will feel the difference in your body before your ears fully understand it. These song is a journey to where Cuban music first learned to breathe.
7. TU MIRADA FT. ALEMOR - Your Gaze · Bolero · Written & composed by Renesito Avich
A bolero in its truest form. Intimate, unhurried, built entirely on the power of a look. Cuban bolero is love music with no shortcuts: every phrase earns its feeling. Tonight Renesito shares the stage with Alemor, and together they give this song the space it deserves.
8. TIEMPO - Time · Son Cubano · Written & composed by Renesito Avich
Of everything Renesito Avich brings to this stage tonight, his voice, his craft, and his decades of music, Tiempo is the most meaningful thing he can share. This original composition is not a performance, it is a confession, and it is also the time he is sharing tonight with his audience.Time is the one thing we cannot negotiate with, cannot buy back, cannot stop. And yet we spend most of our lives forgetting that. Tiempo was born from that reckoning, from the quiet, sometimes painful awareness of what we carry, what we've left behind, and what we choose to do with the hours still ahead. It is the song of a man who rebuilt himself in a new city and discovered that the most radical act is simply to be present, fully and honestly, without pretense.When this song plays, set everything else down. This one is worth your full attention.
9. CHAN CHAN - Buena Vista Social Club · Son Cubano
Composed by Compay Segundo and made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club, Chan Chan is perhaps the most recognized Cuban song of the last thirty years. Its guitar pattern is instantly familiar to millions. If you know one Cuban song, you know this one. If you don't — you are about to.
10. CONFLICTOS - Conflicts · Instrumental
Music is not only sweetness, it also knows tension, contradiction, the push and pull of the human heart. Conflictos lives in that space, with the bass stepping forward for a solo that gives the low end a voice of its own. Feel the groove. Let it unsettle you in the best way.
11. QUIERO BAILAR UN SON - I Want to Dance a Son · Son Cubano
The night ends the only way a Cuban concert can: with a direct, joyful, non-negotiable invitation to dance. Son is the heartbeat of Cuban music, the form that gave birth to salsa, mambo, and so much of what the world calls Latin music. When this song begins, your feet will know what to do. Trust them.
THE MUSICIANS
The talented artists sharing the stage tonight.
