The group’s composer and arranger, Carlos Henriquez, said that he organized these donations after a first trip to Cuba in 2010, when they realized that, at several of the capital’s schools, students practiced with broken or worn out instruments: some guitars lacked strings, trumpets had no valves and the wood of violins looked cracked, the Cubadebate Web site reported
 

A year later, members of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra returned to the Caribbean island with an aircraft full of instruments and on Wednesday they began to carry out the donations at four schools in the capital, among them the Guillermo Tomas School’s Conservatory.
 

Henriquez traveled to Havana with a group of musicians and luthiers who will give classes at workshops and will help to repair the Cuban students’ instruments during their four-day stay.
 

The US musicians donated instruments for four complete acoustic jazz orchestras, consisting of 24 new instruments each, all of them made in New York, thought to be worth approximately a quarter of a million dollars.
 

The visit of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra is part of the latest cultural exchanges taking place between Cuba and the United States, favored by the relaxation of trips to the island that began with President Barack Obama’s assumption of office.