Artist Spotlight for A Latin Rhapsody (May 18-19, 2024)

 

Aldo López-Gavilán, piano

“López-Gavilán is not only a formidable virtuoso, but also exceeds in works that require extraordinary color and fascinating sounds. His natural talent never suffers and his original thinking as an artist assures a performance of amazing playing and individuality.”

— The London Times

Praised for his “dazzling technique and rhythmic fire” in the Seattle Times and dubbed a “formidable virtuoso” by The Times (London), Cuban pianist and composer Aldo López-Gavilán excels in both the classical and jazz worlds as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber-music collaborator, and performer of his own electrifying jazz compositions. He was an instant hit in Mobile when he opened the season in 2019 with Ravel’s Concerto in G Major. His brother Ilmar, violinist with the Harlem Quartet, has performed frequently for the MSO.

He has appeared in such prestigious concert halls as the Amadeo Roldán (Cuba), Teresa Carreño (Venezuela), Bellas Artes (Mexico), Carnegie Hall and Jordan Hall (U.S.), Royal Festival Hall (U.K.), Nybrokajen 11 (Sweden), The Hall of Music (Russia), and Duc de Lombard et Petit Journal Montparnasse (France), as well as venues in Canada, Santo Domingo, Colombia, Spain, Greece, Hong Kong, Burkina Faso, Germany, and Austria.

López-Gavilán was born in Cuba to a family of internationally acclaimed classical musicians, his father a conductor and composer, his mother a concert pianist. At the age of five, he had written his first musical composition. His mother introduced the budding prodigy to the piano at the age of four, and he began formal piano studies at seven. His first international triumph came at the age of eleven when he won a Danny Kaye International Children’s Award, organized by UNICEF. He made his professional debut at age twelve with the Matanzas Symphony Orchestra and later went on to perform Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba. Parallel to his classical abilities, López-Gavilán developed remarkable skills in improvisation. He was invited to perform in the world-famous Havana Jazz Festival with the legendary Chucho Valdés, who called him “simply a genius, a star.”

During the past decade, López-Gavilán’s collaborators have included some of the greatest artists in the classical, popular music, and jazz fields. The late conductor Claudio Abbado invited him to perform with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in 2006, in a special concert dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Maestro Abbado subsequently invited him to perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in Caracas and Havana.

In 2009 López-Gavilán was invited by popular Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela to join his band for a tour of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay; his acoustic arrangements of Varela’s music won many accolades from critics and fans. In 2010 he joined the São Paulo Jazz Symphonic Orchestra to perform his music in a concert that was recorded and broadcast on national television in Brazil.

López-Gavilán’s Carnegie Hall debut took place in November of 2012, when he was invited to participate in the hall’s prestigious Voces de Latino América festival. That same month he played a two-piano concerto with his colleague Harold López-Nussa in Miami. In May of that year, he released his sixth album, De todos los colores y también verde.

A milestone in López-Gavilán’s professional and personal life came in early 2015, when he partnered with Harlem Quartet—co-founded by his brother Ilmar, the quartet’s first violinist, for concerts in Calgary, Seattle, and Phoenix. That same year he was invited to play with his jazz quintet at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires; performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá; and closed the year with a sold-out concert at the Teatro del Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana.

López-Gavilán began the year 2019 with three performances of Rhapsody in Blue at The Florida Orchestra . He continued his North American tour in the spring of that year with concerts in Covington, LA; Chicago, IL; Montreal, QC; Napa, CA; Boston, MA; and Colorado Springs, CO. He also performed with his jazz quartet and a renowned group of guests at the iconic Teatro Marti in Havana. The concert was filmed for a concert DVD and streaming special, López-Gavilán Live at Teatro Martí.

With the summer of 2019 came the fulfillment of a longstanding dream of López-Gavilán and his brother Ilmar: recording an album together. López-Gavilán wrote some new material for this special occasion, while several of his existing compositions were arranged for violin and piano by Ilmar. The resulting album, Brothers, contains a number of tracks that will be supported with live concerts by the duo.

López-Gavilán and Ilmar are featured in the documentary Los Hermanos / The Brothers, which tracks their parallel lives and momentous first performances together despite the geopolitical divide. It features a genre-bending score composed by López-Gavilán, performed largely with his brother, and guest appearances by Joshua Bell and Harlem Quartet. A PatchWorks Films production by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, Los Hermanos.