“When that place is missing, the heart and mind suffers a conflict.”

David De La Mora is an orchestra conductor, professional musician (viola), and professor.

I left because in my country the “music and show world” is very controlled; a small group of people control orchestras, theaters, recordings, music contracts, concert halls, budgets, everything, and don’t allow anyone to take part if they feel that you could be a “threat.” It cost a lot of time, patience, and human health to find something, to create, to keep trying or change something, and if you do your first steps in some way not under their control, even like that you will have to avoid many difficulties from the Cuban cultural system. In other words, I left because I wanted to create a great career and they won’t ever let me do it or be able to fight for it.

I know that my move is not permanent: I’m looking to develop a professional career and I’m trying in this new place and with a new system—lets see how it goes. The world is always changing and we never know where is the “Triumph” that’s waiting for you. That is why we have to look everywhere, and surely never forget that Home is always Home.

For someone who indeed loved and very deeply his place, his world, family and friends—when all that is missing, the soul, heart, and mind suffers a conflict. Many emotions come to you and surely in the most intimate times of your life, which in my case are the moments when I play my instrument or conduct an orchestra. A musician feels so much underneath the skin when they play music, and all those feelings turn more dramatic with his performance. Being a musician is all I am, and in order to be my greatest I had to look outside of my country—where I cannot find the way to work and develop my self as I would like to

David de la Mora
Maestro Orchestra Conductor
Viola Master Performance, 
Violin and Viola Major Professor, 
Piano Professor
National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba
 Guest Conductor
National Ballet of Cuba,
Guest Conductor
Georgian Court University, NJ
, Music Adjunct Professor

Portraits of People on the Move tells the stories of Philadelphia-area immigrants through their own words on the Supperdance.com blog and was first shown as an exhibition June 25–28, 2015, at the Gray Area of Crane Arts in Philadelphia. The exhibition was created as a companion work to Supper, People on the Move by Cardell Dance Theater, a dance inspired by themes of migration.