“Against all odds, or more vividly as it’s said in Spanish, contra viento y marea (against the wind and the tide), Ochoa kept a professional symphony orchestra going in our area when other, more ambitious ensembles had failed. And he did it, not out of personal ambition, but, as Miami Symphony board of directors chairman Rafael Díaz-Balart says, ‘because he wanted to give something back to the community that had given him so much’.”