Rhapsody in Blue

Aldo López-Gavilán

Praised for his “dazzling technique and rhythmic fire” in the Seattle Times and dubbed a “formidable virtuoso” by TheTimes (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.

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. The latter introduced him to the piano at the age of four; at five, he wrote his first composition; and at seven, he began formal piano studies. He won a Danny Kaye International Children’s Award at age 11, and the following year debuted with the Matanzas Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba. López-Gavilán’s Carnegie Hall debut took place in November of 2012 during the prestigious Voces de Latino América festival. Parallel to his classical abilities, López-Gavilán developed remarkable skills in improvisation. He performed at the world-famous Havana Jazz Festival with the legendary Chucho Valdés, who called him “simply a genius, a star.”

A milestone in López-Gavilán’s professional and personal life came in early 2015, when he partnered with the Harlem Quartet—co-founded by his brother Ilmar, the quartet’s first violinist—for concerts in Calgary, Seattle, and Phoenix. This continued in the summer and fall of 2016 with a U.S. tour that included concerts and residencies at the Rockport (MA) Chamber Music Festival, Chautauqua Institution, Santa Fe College, Las Vegas’s Smith Center, the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, and L.A.’s Wallis Annenberg Center.

Since 2016, López-Gavilán has played an active role in cultural exchange between the US and Cuba. Under Joshua Bell’s direction, López-Gavilán aided in organizing Seasons of Cuba, a PBS Special that took place at Lincoln Center, celebrating a new era of cultural diplomacy. At the Napa Festival in July 2016, he rejoined Bell for his Seasons of Cuba concert, and that same month he premiered Emporium, his first concerto for piano and orchestra, with Nevada’s Classical Tahoe Orchestra, led by Joel Revzen. Several years later, he reunited with the ensemble to record the concerto, this time under the direction of Ken-David Masur.

With the summer of 2019 came the fulfillment of a longstanding dream of López-Gavilán and his brother Ilmar:
recording an album together, appropriately titled Brothers. Aldo wrote some new material for this special occasion, while Ilmar arranged several of his existing compositions for violin and piano. The album won First Prize in the Instrumental Music category for the 2020-2021 Cubadisco Awards (Cuba’s equivalent to the Grammys).

In the fall of 2019, his new solo album Playgrounds was released by the French label Esprit du Piano. This album represents a new stage for him as a composer and brings together a wide range of styles including jazz, world music, Afro, experimental music, and Cuban sounds and rhythms. Also in late 2019, López-Gavilán was honored as the composer in residence at Habana Clásica Festival, where many internationally known musicians performed a wide assortment of his compositions.

López-Gavilán’s recent North American engagements include The Florida Orchestra; the Colorado Springs, Chicago, and Boulder philharmonics; the Chautauqua, West Michigan and Mobile symphonies; and Canada’s Maison symphonique de Montréal. He has appeared at New York’sJazz at Lincoln Center; Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts; the Kennedy Center and the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC; the Chamber Music Society of Detroit; the Wallis Annenberg Center in Los Angeles; and Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. In the U.S. he has performed with such conductors as Michael Butterman, Josep Caballé-Domenech, Michael Francis, and his wife Daiana García, among many others.