After sixteen years thrilling audiences around the world, the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club® is bidding ‘Adios‘ with a farewell world tour show at London’s The O2.

The group – which has been touring the globe in different forms, guises and combinations since 1997 – has taken to the road one final time with a series of concerts celebrating the Orquesta’s journey as ambassadors for Cuban music. After performing around the world, the tour will end where the journey began with a homecoming gala performance in Havana in April following the show at The O2.

The show at The O2 will be the group’s biggest show in London since it played to 17000 people in Hyde Park in 2000 with Ibrahim Ferrer (1927-2005). In October this year the Orquesta played a special performance at the White House for Barack Obama becoming the first Cuban group to play there since the 1960s.

‘We wanted our traditional music to live on and to enchant the world and this is what our tours achieved. It has been an incredible part of my career and life.’ Omara Portuondo

The Adios Tour represents the distillation of more than a thousand shows over 16 years involving more than forty musicians. During that time the group has evolved into a customised, dynamic, multi-generational big band in which veterans and younger performers have combined to celebrate Cuban musical tradition with flair and élan.

Under the musical direction of band leader and trombonist Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos, the line-up features several of those who played on the original Buena Vista Social Club album and film all those years ago, including Cowboy hatted singer/guitarist Eliades Ochoa, the incomparable veteran diva Omara Portuondo, trumpeter Guajiro Mirabal and laud virtuoso Barbarito Torres.

The ‘ADIOS TOUR’ tour coincides  with the release of Buena Vista Social Club ‘Lost and Found‘. A collection of previously unreleased tracks, some recorded at the first legendary sessions in Havana and others during the extraordinarily rich outpouring of music that followed.

‘Two hours in the company of the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club is a heart-warming, uplifting experience everyone should sample at least once.’ Edinburgh Evening News****

‘Taking the atmosphere up to a breathless level.’ The Independent

‘Left audiences awe-struck.’ Financial Times

Support comes from Calypso Rose – from Trinidad & Tobago – who has been the undisputed queen of Calypso for more than 40 years. Having produced 30 albums and composed 800 songs, in 2015 she met Manu Chao who co-produced her next album Far From Home – to be released in the spring and which takes her in a fresh new direction.

Doors 6.30

Calypso Rose 7.30

Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club 8.20

15s must be accompanied by an adult aged 18+