Buena Vista Social Club in Buffalo

Buena Vista Social Club is a Cuban recording project and ensemble assembled in Havana in 1996 by producer Nick Gold, guitarist Ry Cooder and bandleader Juan de Marcos González. Its self-titled album introduced a wide audience to veteran musicians including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Omara Portuondo through songs such as “Chan Chan,” “Dos Gardenias” and “El Cuarto de Tula.” Wim Wenders documented the musicians and their performances in the film Buena Vista Social Club. The album’s musicians performed at Amsterdam’s Royal Carré Theatre and Carnegie Hall in 1998, and footage from those concerts became central to Wenders’s film. A later touring lineup billed as Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club carried the repertoire internationally, closing its Adiós Tour with concerts at Teatro Karl Marx in 2016.