I lived the first six months of my life within a half mile of the Garfield Park Conservatory, and yet didn’t remember anything about it when I returned for the Alonso brothers concert.

A conservatory, according to Merriam-Webster, can be a greenhouse or a music school, which made it appropriate to place these two powerful pianists among pots and plants to present their pleasurable program.

Fortunately, the room was comfortably climate-controlled, cooler than other parts of the conservatory, corresponding to the captivatingly cool Caribbean music of the concert, which bore no relation to that which was elicited from students by that famous alleged ought 5 graduate of the Gary, Indiana Conservatory, Harold Hill.

Breaking from a scheduled playlist that was to include Brahms and Debussy, the Alonso brothers concentrated on pieces related to their Cuban heritage, some of which were familiar to the audience, such as Malaguena and Oye Como Va, the composer of which, Tito Puenta, actually was Puerto Rican, but was inspired to write the piece by Cuban composer Cachao, originator of the mambo. In any event, the Santana version of it helped get me through my senior year of college.

In addition to changing their playlist, the brothers informed the audience, during their enthusiastic, informative, and humorous song introductions, that they originally had been scheduled to play their duets upon a single piano, but asked for a second, while hoping that this added expense wouldn’t be taken out of their paychecks.

Both brothers read their music off tablets, a practice that I’ve written about before, but about which I’ve found additional information, in particular about page-turning, using a foot pedal, when using a tablet, a trend that explains why page-turner is not listed among the fastest growing occupations by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.