Education
At the age of 14, Espinosa graduated from the Conservatorio Internacional de Música in Havana as a professor of piano and music theory.
At the age of 14, Espinosa graduated from the Conservatorio Internacional de Música in Havana as a professor of piano and music theory.
When Conchita 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. 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 States
In 1933, at the age of 19, she founded “Louisiana 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 10-acre (40,000 m2) parcel.
The school now serves students in grades pre-kindergarten to eighth grade.