Harold López-Nussa Torres

Pianist. He is one of the youngest and most popular jazz performers on the island.

He began his studies at the Conservatorio Manuel Saumell, and is in his second year of piano at the Instituto Superior de Arte with Teresita Junco. He obtained the Grand Prize at the Amadeo Roldán National Piano Competition; First Prize at the Iberoamerican Competition; finalist at the Citta di Senigalia.

Harold's mother is a piano teacher and his father and brother are well-known percussionists. His uncle, Ernán López-Nussa, is a pianist and one of the giants of Cuban jazz. All of them have contributed in some way to making Harold the phenomenon he is today.

He has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and with the Symphony Orchestra of Matanzas, with which, conducted by Enrique Pérez Mesa, he performed Maurice Ravel's Concerto in G Major; he also performed Heitor Villa-Lobos' Concerto No. 4, for piano and orchestra.

At the seventh edition of the Solo Piano Competition, with his performance of Memories of Tomorrow, by Keith Jarrett, Footprints, by W. Shorter, and E'echa, by Harold López-Nussa, he was awarded the Prize, in a competition in which he had been a finalist, along with Phillipe Baden Powell de Aquino, from Brazil, and Niel Djuliarso, from Indonesia.

He has performed with the group Klímax, by Giraldo Piloto; the quartet of trumpeter Alexander Brown, Robertico Carcassés, Elmer Ferrer and his group, Haila Mompié, Teresa García Caturla, José Miguel Crego (El Greco), Bobby Carcassés and Yusa.

About what he likes to play, he comments: "It's like a dream to be able to play both types of music. Jazz is a great passion that I have, in my family everyone is a jazz musician and I carry it within me, I feel that it offers me tremendous freedom to create, all the time. But concert music is my other passion, because I have trained as an interpreter of the great works of the universal classical repertoire for piano, and that has no comparison with anything."

His first album recorded in Cuba, Canciones, is part of The jazz young spirit collection, by Producciones Colibrí. In this album he proposes a different concept, away from what normally attracts young Cubans: making his debut with pieces of his own authorship and rather in the Latin jazz style. Therefore, conversely, he gives us his versions of eight songs composed by: Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes (A felicidade), Miguel Matamoros (Olvido), Pablo Milanés (Para vivir), Santiago Feliú (Para Bárbara), Carlos Varela (Detrás del cristal), Fito Páez (11 y 6), César Portillo de la Luz (Contigo en la distancia), Silvio Rodríguez (Causas y azares) and another by Harold himself (Bailando suiza).

In 2009, his album Herencia was released, accompanied in his trio by Felipe Cabrera on bass (who also does some vocals) and his brother Ruy Adrian López-Nussa on drums. As guests, there are Mayquel González (trumpet) on a couple of tracks and Omara Portuondo on "Es más, te perdono".

Harold López-Nussa does not overload his phrasing with notes and manages to say more with less. Of the eleven tracks, seven bear his signature and among the other four is Clapton's "Tears in Heaven".

Works

E'echa.
Bailando suiza