As we walked out of the baggage hall of Havana airport and into the sultry night air, he smiled a smile of happy relief. After months of planning, hours of travel and more hours anxiously waiting in the customs hall, the contraband he had brought with him had made it through. In four heavy suitcases one of Ireland's leading piano tuners has brought to Cuba a cargo that the Office of Missile and Nuclear Technology in the United States' Commerce department would much rather he hadn't. Must be weapons grade plutonium, you imagine, or at least a missile guidance system.

But no, Ryan's cargo is piano strings, tuning pegs, felts and hammers . . . the latest consignment in the Send a Piana to Havana project.

It all began for Ryan a few years ago when he answered a call from the founder of the project, American Ben Treuhaft, for tuners to volunteer their services to come and fix Cuba's stock of aging, termite-ridden pianos. So impressed was Ryan by what he saw and heard in Havana, and so convinced that helping Cuba's young musicians to learn and play the piano was a noble cause, that he came home and began planning the project that culminated just before Christmas in two star-studded benefit concerts. And now here he is in Havana, thanks to the support of two open-handed Irish audiences, determined to help the Send a Piana to Havana programme.

I have been asked to help out with the documentary film being made about the project by flautist and broadcaster Ellen Cranitch who, like Ryan, was inspired to help on a previous visit to Cuba.

And yes, alongside the highminded desire to see that Cuban musicians have the decent instruments they deserve, it has not escaped our notice that we are flying into one of the world's great musical powerhouses, where the pianos . . . not to mention the drums, the trumpets and the maracas . . . are put to good use.

As I watch Ryan get down to work the next day in Havana's Escola Nationale de Arte, amid the din of a thousand young musicians practising in every room around us, I can't help thinking about all the great Cuban pianists who have brought the music of their homeland to the world. Somewhere amongst these students could be the next Chucho Valdes, Ruben Gonzalez or Gonzalo Rubalcaba.

And perhaps they will get there a little faster thanks to a piano repaired and tuned by the new generation of Cuban piano tuners, now gathered round Ryan as he patiently shows how to dismantle the two pianos that will be his first assignment in Havana . . . a fine old nine-foot Russian concert grand and a battered but beautiful American six-footer.

For the next three weeks, we will follow the project on film, and I will be keeping readers fully appraised of his progress.

But lest you think that I have deserted you entirely, I do also have a couple of recommendations concerning piano players who may be heard on our own island in the coming weeks. Tomorrow night in JJ Smyths, pianist Phil Ware's Summit continues with an encounter with the superb English singer Ian Shaw, whose combination of vocal talent and ready wit will be a must-hear. And then on Thursday, pianist Joey Calderazzo will be one quarter of the truly excellent Branford Marsalis group who fly into Dublin for the latest installment of the Walton's World Masters series at the National Concert Hall (see CD review). OK, its not Cuba, but we can't all be the lucky so-andso who is writing this seated on the shores of the Caribbean with the strains of a Cuban rhumba drifting up from the Malecon.

Long live Cuba! Long live Cuba's pianos!

www. sendapiana. com
www. jjsmyths. com
www. newschool. ie/cgi-bin/masters