Prospects for performances in Cuba by the New York Philharmonic look promising following a tour of concert halls and meetings with music officials on the island, orchestra president Zarin Mehta said Sunday.

Mehta said a final decision will be made by the Philharmonic's board of directors. Eric Latzky, the orchestra's vice president for communications, said an official announcement could be as much as a month off.

But Mehta said the trip looks promising, with tentative plans for performances on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at the 900-seat Teatro Amadeo Roldan, a renovated concert hall a few blocks from the Malecon coastal highway.

''We have to go back now and work on repertoires, budgets. There are practical considerations like: how do you get the instruments in, where do you store them?'' Mehta told The Associated Press in Havana.

The Philharmonic's incoming music director, Alan Gilbert, would conduct.

The island's Culture Ministry invited the orchestra to perform in Havana, and U.S. officials have agreed to allow the musicians to visit under an exemption to legal restrictions on travel to Cuba, Latzky said.

The Communist Party daily Granma reported on Saturday that authorities were looking forward to such a tour, which would be among the most high-profile American cultural exchanges with communist Cuba since Fidel Castro's rebels came to power a half-century ago.

Source: Miami Herald