Conchita Espinosa
Conchita Espinosa was a world-renowned pianist who combined academics and the arts to create an educational style that exists today at Conchita Espinosa Academy in Miami, Florida.
Early life and education
When Espinosa was three years old, she played popular Cuban melodies on the piano by ear for the first time in an ice cream parlor. She began formal piano lessons when she was five. At the age of 14, Espinosa graduated from the Conservatorio Internacional de Música in Havana as a professor of piano and music theory. She continued her music education with renowned professors and artists Joaquín Nin, Ernesto Berumen and Jascha Fishermann. Espinosa performed concerts in Mexico, Cuba and the United StatesCareer
In 1933, at the age of 19, she founded “La Academia Musical Conchita Espinosa” in Havana. By 1959, at the end of Batista's pro-Western rule, the Academy – which included an elementary school and music and dance programs – had 450 students. Three decades later, after leaving Fidel Castro's Cuba and arriving in Miami, Espinosa continued her life's work as a teacher of music.In 1963, she opened Conchita Espinosa Academy in Miami, in the garage of a small home in the neighborhood that would later become Little Havana. The Academy grew in enrollment, until, in 1984, it moved to a parcel. The school now serves students in grades pre-kindergarten to eighth grade. Conchita Espinosa Academy is now directed by her daughter, Maribel Diaz.