Where Memory Finds Its Music: Buena Vista Social Club Brings Havana’s Heart to Broward Center

By Joanie Cox Henry

Some music enters through your ears and settles somewhere beneath your ribs. Buena Vista Social Club, now at the Broward Center, goes down smooth like a Little Havana cafecito and simmers in your soul. Its rhythms invite you closer; its voices give you reasons to stay. This beautiful musical understands how a song can hold a vanished room, an unfinished love, an entire lifetime waiting to be heard again. But you should be warned. You will want to dance in your seat.

Presented as part of the 2026/2027 Bank of America Broadway in Fort Lauderdale season, the production plays the Au-Rene Theater through October 18. For South Florida, where Cuban culture is woven into everyday life, its arrival feels especially resonant. There is something deeply moving about watching this music receive the expansive theatrical embrace it deserves from Cuba to Carnegie Hall and ultimately, Broward Center.

With a book by Marco Ramirez and direction by Saheem Ali, the story moves between Havana in 1956 and 1996, connecting youthful ambition with the extraordinary possibilities of second chances. Inspired by the musicians behind the celebrated album, it explores what survives when time changes our circumstances: friendship, regret, artistic hunger and the stubborn desire to make something beautiful together even if it costs you everything.

Karmine Alers gives Omara a compelling combination of dignity, emotional depth and vocal warmth. Her presence anchors the production, allowing the character’s history to feel close enough to touch. As Young Omara, Isabel Gonzalez brings luminous promise and sensitivity, creating a lovely connection between the woman becoming herself and the woman looking back.

Mauro Castillo’s Ibrahim radiates charisma and generosity, while Jaleel Battles Jr. brings appealing vitality to Young Ibrahim. Together, their portrayals honor the distance between youthful possibility and seasoned understanding. Robert M. Jiménez lends Rubén an engaging humanity, complemented by Irving Aday O’Connor’s vibrant musicality as Young Rubén.

Frank Rodríguez brings personality and warmth to Compay, with Aidan Olmo supplying youthful spark as Young Compay. San Miguel Pérez enriches Eliades with authentic musical presence. Liana Morales gives Young Haydee heartfelt grace, and Holiday brings welcome versatility to Juan de Marcos and the Man in Suit. Each helps populate this world with people worth listening to.

The dancers make the music visible. Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck’s choreography gives rhythm a physical vocabulary, allowing longing, attraction and celebration to travel through the body. There is exhilarating freedom in the movement, supported by the discipline required to make intricate work appear so natural.

Armando Brydson contributes athletic energy, Jazlyn Carreras expressive elegance, and Jhon Destrade dynamic presence. Destinee Jiménez brings vivid assurance, Alex Llorca engaging precision, and Gabby Rembert infectious vitality. Brydson and Llorca also lend useful versatility as the Bodyguards. Together, these performers create a community whose energy extends beyond any individual spotlight.

The company’s depth also deserves recognition. Swings Erica Simone Barnett and Ralphie Rivera de Jesús provide essential versatility, with Rivera de Jesús serving as dance captain and Jiménez as assistant dance captain. Standby and understudy artists Orgena Rose, Josh Tower, Kwabena Bawuah and Adrián Guardián strengthen that foundation; Tower also serves as fight captain. Their preparation supports the production’s demanding collective achievement.

And then there is the band: magnificent, indispensable and deserving of its own love letter. There are orchestra pits in musicals that stay with you forever and then there is Buena Vista Social Club's musicians who have essentially redefined what it means to play live music in a play. It's in a league all its own.

Music director Nicolas Perez supplies leadership and piano finesse, supported by associate conductor and pianist Adrián Guardián. Irving Aday O’Connor adds sparkling piano artistry. San Miguel Pérez’s tres brings distinctive brightness, Abraham Dorta’s guitar offers supple texture, and Jorge Bringas’s bass provides the grounding pulse that lets everything above it soar.

Percussionists Ray Contreras, Keisel Jiménez Leyva and Caleb Michel create a richly layered rhythmic conversation. Roisel Suárez’s trumpet brings brilliance, Ben Romanow’s trombone adds resonant depth, and Joaquín Sosa’s woodwinds offer expressive color. Percussion swing Marcos A. Torres III contributes valuable versatility to this exceptional musical team.

Under music supervisor Dean Sharenow, arrangements by Marco Paguia, Javier Diaz and David Oquendo, with additional piano arrangements by Leonardo Reyna, give these songs room to breathe. The musicians listen as beautifully as they play. Their interplay makes the stage feel alive with spicy discovery.

“Chan Chan,” “Dos Gardenias” and “Silencio” offer different shades of intimacy, while “Candela” and “El Cuarto de Tula” feed the production’s exuberant spirit. Even without understanding every Spanish lyric, an audience can follow the emotional current. A held note, a rhythmic exchange, a dancer’s reaching arm: each carries meaning.

What lingers is the tenderness beneath the celebration. These characters carry years of choices and losses into the music, and the production allows joy to coexist with that weight. Its optimism feels earned. Artistic connection offers them a way forward, even when the past remains complicated.

Buena Vista Social Club leaves a beautiful invitation ringing in the air and inspires its audience to keep listening, keep creating, keep room for another beginning. At Broward Center, Havana’s musical heartbeat becomes a shared celebration of everything time can deepen and everything a song can bring back into the light again. This show is as passionate as it gets and you have to si it for yourself!

Get your tickets here.