Clara Amalia de los Reyes Romero de Nicola

Born in La Habana, guitarist and professor. One of the pioneers of the current Cuban School of Guitar.

She began her musical studies in La Habana but graduated from the Conservatorio del Liceo de Barcelona, in Spain.

Starting in 1916, she began her pedagogical-innovative work in music, first as a domestic pianist and later as a professor at the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de La Habana (today Conservatorio "Amadeo Roldán"), at the Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical incorporated into the Conservatorio Tárrega which she also founded and directed, and at the Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad.

She taught her students not only concert guitar, but popular guitar and accompanying guitar with their corresponding repertoires that included genres of Cuban and Latin American music in general and classical works.

At the Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical she organized a guitar school and held several festivals, created the Sociedad Guitarrística de Cuba (1939), the Guitarra magazine and Cuba's first guitar orchestra.

She offered courses, gave lectures and published didactic works.

As a concert performer she presented herself in theatrical halls in Cuba and New York, and her last public concert took place in 1936, together with her son, also guitarist Issac Nicola (1926-1997), with whom she later developed a program for the training of professors that includes disciplines such as History of Music, Chamber Music, Chamber Ensembles, Popular Music Ensembles, Folk Guitar and Orchestra Guitar.

She was decorated with the National Order of Merit "Carlos Manuel de Céspedes" in the degree of Knight.