Havana Workshop
Repairs & Restoration
THE NATIONAL WORKSHOP OF INSTRUMENT REPAIR
Tucked away in a back street of Havana Centro, the National Workshop of Musical Instrument Repair is the Cuban headquarters of Una Corda, and the heart of piano work in the country’s capital city. This atmospheric building has been central to Cuba’s piano trade since before the revolution. It’s earliest use was as an assembly station for pianos being shipped to Cuba from North America. The instruments would arrive ‘flat-packed’, and be assembled in the workshop before being delivered to the hotels, casinos, nightclubs and the houses of the well-heeled Havana party set. After the revolution in 1959, all trade with the US stopped and that included pianos. However the Soviet Union with its own distinguished piano tradition, helped the Cuban administration to run the workshop, keeping it well stocked, and training new tuners and technicians to look after the nation’s precious stock of instruments.
Wth the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, Cuba entered what was called ‘el periodo especial’, – the special period, when critical shortages of basic daily provisions were experienced throughout the island. 
The end of Soviet financial support, and the ongoing trade and travel blockade by the United States put the Cuban economy under extreme pressure, and as a result the workshop fell into disrepair. The materials required to maintain pianos became scarce or ran out entirely. The very specific tools of the trade became broken or unusable, and the tuners and technicians found it increasingly difficult to carry out their work. The once thriving National Workshop of Instrument Repair began to look more like a disused warehouse.
This is how we found it in 2007, when we began to look for a long term strategy to help Cuban musicians. Following discussions with the Ministry of Culture about how to revive the piano trade in Cuba, the National Workshop was identified as a crucial resource for the country’s hard-pressed tuners and technicians. With responsibility for hundreds of pianos in Havana’s music schools, it was realised that any improvements to the worskhop –in terms of the building’s fabric, its facilities and its stock of spare parts – would have an immediate and lasting effect on the musical life of the city.
A detailed assessment of the building was made, a plan of work drawn up, and in 2009 an agreement was signed between Una Corda and the Cuban Minstry of Culture to restore the workshop to the standard required for full time piano repair and restoration. The workshop needs new electrical wiring, lighting, ventilation, water, sanitation, and proper storage facilities, as well as a number of new windows, repairs to the roof, and even a new front door. Funds raised by Una Corda and donated by members of the music community in Ireland will purchase the materials, and our Cuban counterparts will supply the labour.
This work already started, and the workshop now contains a very useful store of materials, 
every ounce of which have been transported to there by friends of Una Corda as part of our courier programme. Work on the fabric of the building is also underway, though the sourcing materials in Cuba has been made more difficult after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav in 2009, when the government quite understandably prioritised all building materials for the reconstruction of people’s homes.
Despite the setbacks and the challenges, the workshop proudly repaired its first piano for many years in February 2009, when it collected an old American concert grand piano from the Escuela de Musica Manuel Saumell, a specialist secondary school in downtown Havana for gifted young musicians (click here to watch a video of the day). Extensive work was carried out to the action and keyboard of this paino, and the treble strings – rusted and brittle – were replaced. 
That piano is now back in the classroom, with a new generation of Cuban musicians learning at its keyboard.
Keep checking back here for updates on the restoration of the workshop, and follow this link to David Creedon’s photographic exhibtion of images of the workshop prior to it being repaired. http://unacorda.org/188/
