Music Director

Lourdes F. Santiesteban Mora

Lourdes began to study piano with her mother at age three, in Havana, Cuba. By age five, she was attending Cuba’s Escuela Nacional de Música, where she completed elementary and middle school. She went on to attend the Escuela Nacional de las Artes (ENA), where she completed her music education, after which she entered the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), where she earned her Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Orchestral Conducting and Piano. She received instruction from numerous distinguished teachers, among them, Valery Kamishov (a Queen Isabel of Belgium awardee); Russian conductor Yury Avierin; and Jorge López Marín (a Khatchaturian protégé). Among her references one can find the likes of Paquito D’Rivera as well as numerous, eminent, faculty members of the Eastman School and other U.S., Latin American, and European conservatories.

By age sixteen, Lourdes was offering music lessons to school children in Santiago de Cuba; instructing students in chamber music in Havana; and teaching piano and voice at the ISA. She also taught piano, chamber music, choir, and orchestra conducting, and performed recitals at the Universidad de Nueva León in Monterrey, Mexico. By age twenty-one, she was teaching higher-level students and began a career as a solo pianist and accompanist for professional artists. Some of her many accomplishments after than include being appointed Professor of Piano at the Esteban Salas Conservatory in Santiago, in eastern Cuba, in 1978; becoming a Coordinator and Professor at Cuba’s ENA, by 1980, in a program for training nation’s future music instructors. By 1989, she was coaching opera singers and Assistant Director of the Teatro García Lorca in Havana, and by 1991, she founded the Orquesta Juvenil at the Escuela Nacional de Música and also served as Director of the Symphony Orchestra of Camagüey, in central Cuba.

A few of the highlights of her career include the distinction of having conducted for renowned Spanish soprano Victoria de los Ángeles and Spanish tenor Pedro Lavirgen, and arranging and conducting music by well-known Cuban musician and composer Pablo Milanés, in 2000; debuting as Music Director of the Symphony Orchestra of Camagüey by performing Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story”; serving as Pianist and Accompanist at Prague’s Spring Festival in 1989; touring 23 cities in Italy as a Music Associate and Pianist  for operettas such as “The Merry Widow” in 1990; becoming Master of Repertoire for the Gonzalo Roig Zarzuela Theatre in the Gran Teatro de la Habana from 1987-1995; and, in 2000, performing in 21 cities in Spain playing her own composition, “F.G.L.,” an homage to national poet Federico García Lorca on his 100th anniversary.

Since 2006, when professional pianist, orchestra conductor, vocal coach, and music pedagogue Dr. Lourdes Santiesteban left Cuba to come to the United States, she has worked as a medical and legal interpreter and translator, reviewer, vocal coach, piano instructor and, most recently, as a choir director, too. In the U.S., Lourdes has directed numerous choirs, worked as a piano accompanist for a number of institutions; given numerous benefits and well as other recitals; and worked as a Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music and at the Hochstein School of Music in Rochester, NY. Since coming to Pittsburgh, she has served as Music Director and Conductor for Coro Latinoamericano-Pittsburgh and conducted performances with the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh and the Heritage Chorale of Pittsburgh.

She brings to Coro Latinoamericano not just passion, but expertise in many musical genres, among them classical, Latin American and Caribbean folk and popular, and other musical styles in numerous languages that span the globe.