Jhon Destrade Credit: c/o Straz Center
Last year, arts supporters might have seen Jhon Destrade on stage around the Tampa Bay area, maybe at the Cuban Club or the new Tampa Performing Arts Center. He spent the 2025-26 season as a principal dancer with Tampa City Ballet, Tampa’s only professional ballet company.
Starting Oct. 6, theater goers have a chance to see Destrade—who started at Paso A Paso Compañia de Baile in Cuba—onstage inside Carol Morsani Hall at the David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts. He’s spending the 2026-27 season in the cast of the national tour of “Buena Vista Social Club,” one of the most acclaimed Broadway musicals of recent years.
The show chronicles the careers of four musicians who performed at real-life Buena Vista Social Club, a legendary Havana nightclub founded in the 1930s, and with the musical ensemble of the same name, founded in the 1990s, that became an international sensation. The band recorded a hugely successful eponymous album, toured America and Europe, and became the subject of a Wim Wenders documentary with the same title.
The show, which runs just one week only in downtown Tampa, traces the turbulent social and political changes in Cuba over several decades by looking at the history of the club, the musicians and Cuban music generally.
“When I was growing up in Cuba, Buena Vista Social Club was a big thing, like a super-famous thing,” Destrade said in a phone interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. He came to the United States just three years ago, and he still speaks with a heavy Cuban accent.
“When I was in Tampa, I knew already that the’Buena Vista Social Club’ Broadway [show] was open, and I always want to see that show,” he said. “And then I started dancing more and more, and developing my career and this opportunity came. I sent my video, I submitted my video, and here we are. But yeah, what a dream come true.”
Moving from Tampa City Ballet to the ensemble of one of the biggest national tours of the season in just one year may portend a smooth and upwardly mobile career for Destrade, who was born in Camagüey, Cuba, about 300 miles away from the original Buena Vista Social Club. The phrase “a dream come true” comes up pretty often when he’s talking about his career trajectory.
A production photo from ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Credit: Matthew Murphy / c/o David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts
The actual musicians depicted in the musical, sometimes traveled a bumpier road. One of them, Ibrahim Ferrer, released his first solo album in 1999, produced by Ry Cooder. Ferrer won the Latin Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2000, when he was 72 years old. He passed away five years later.
The central character in the musical is Omara Portuondo, who had a long career as member of several prominent groups, one of which performed with Nat King Cole in Las Vegas in the 1950s, and as a solo artist. She’s still living—she’ll turn 96 on Oct. 29—and she’s still a member of the Buena Vista Social Club band, which came to St. Petersburg in 2024.
The musical spans four decades, but it’s set entirely in Havana. It follows the lives and careers of four prominent musicians (Portuondo, Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez and Compay Segundo), starting in the-1950s, culminating with the recording of the Buena Vista Social Club album released in 1997. It’s heavy on joyous music but it gets its substance from looking at how communism and the rise of Fidel Castro affected the music and culture of Cuba during those decades.
The songs in the show were well-known in Cuba, and some of them helped shape Cuban music from the 1930s onward. Most were little-known outside Cuba until the Buena Vista Social Club album and documentary were released in the 1990s.
“Viente Anos” has been described as “a song with a secret.” Composer Maria Teresa wrote the music in 1935; the lyrics were a poem written by a socialite friend about a long-ago love affair. The socialite asked her to keep her identity secret, because of the nature of the lyrics. Cubans speculated about her identity for many years.
“Drume Negrita” is a lullaby, sung to an African-Cuban baby by a caretaker while the baby’s mother works in the fields. It became one of Portuondo’s signature songs.
“El Cuarto de Tula” is a classic Cuban jam that’s basically a long dirty joke punctuated by solo jams by members of the band.
The musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez, opened off-Broadway in 2023 and moved to Broadway in 2025, where it’s still running. It’s been one of the most popular and most lauded shows in New York ever since.
“Throughout, the show touches on who and what is revered as standards of excellence, underlining that Cuban musicians belong in that exalted realm,” wrote Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Times.
Lee Ahlin, a Tampa-based musical theater composer and lyricist known for his musical adaptation of Shakespeare for American Stage, called Buena Vista Social Club “maybe the best musical I’ve ever seen.”
Destrade, who was on the Buffalo stop on the tour when he spoke to CL, said the performers can feel a palpable reaction from the audience.
“The story is beautiful, honestly,” he said. “It’s so exciting for the audience, we can feel that we’re sharing so much love with the audience. It’s a dream come true.”
“Buena Vista Social Club”, which runs Oct. 6-11. kicks off the 2026-27 season at the Straz Center (see the full schedule at the bottom of this post).
Destrade said he doesn’t know what he’ll be doing after this tour ends. He may pursue Broadway or more national tours, or may even come back to Tampa and re-join Tampa City Ballet. For now, he’s loving the tour, he’s loving the show, and he’s excited about returning to Tampa to perform in front of the friends he made during his time here.
“It’s so exciting,” he said. “My friends from the company, my students that I was teaching there, I’m just so excited for them to see this show. To perform at the Straz is another dream come true.”
David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts 2026-27 Broadway season
Buena Vista Social Club” (Oct. 6-11)
Hamilton—Oct. 21–Nov. 8
Cirque du Soleil’s “’Twas the Night Before…”—Nov. 18–29
Death Becomes Her—Dec. 8–13
The Great Gatsby—Jan. 19–24
Wicked—Feb. 3–28
The Sound of Music—March 9–14
Oh, Mary!—April 6–11
Boop! The Musical—April 20–25
Beauty and the Beast—May 4–16
Operation Mincemeat—June 1–6
Jersey Boys—June 15–20
Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.
Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky
This article appears in Sept. 24 – 30, 2026.
Related