Origin Havana, Cuba Music director Fable Record label Harmonia Mundi | Role Jazz Pianist Name Harold Nussa Genres Jazz, Latin jazz, Bebop | |
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Labels Colibri, Harmonia Mundi, World Village Albums New Day, Canciones, Sobre El Atelier Similar People David Sanchez, Stefon Harris, Christian Scott, Ahmad Jamal Profiles | ||
Harold Lopez Nussa Trio - Live @ Jazz à Porquerolles 2018
Harold López-Nussa Torres is a jazz pianist who plays Cuban music and lives in Havana's Vedado neighborhood in Cuba. The 26-year-old pianist is Cuban, and French through his grandmother.
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López-Nussa gave a concert in the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival and recorded with Claude Nobs support, "Sobre el Atelier" in a Swiss studio. "I'm composing, arranging, rehearsing and my main objective is to make my record." The CD piano solo was released on 25 October on Harmonia Mundi. López-Nussa is finishing his musical studies at the Instituto Superior de Arte.
López-Nussa was born into a musical family in Havana on July 13, 1983. Not only are his father, Ruy Francisco López-Nussa and uncle—Ernán, a pianist—working musicians, but also his late mother, Mayra Torres, was a highly regarded piano teacher. At the age of eight, López-Nussa began studying at the Manuel Saumell Elementary School of Music, then the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory and finally graduating with a degree in classical piano from the Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA).
Career
López-Nussa has moved with ease between the classical, popular and jazz music worlds. A quick look at his experiences reveal a recording of Heitor Villa-Lobos' "Fourth Piano Concerto" with Cuba's National Symphony Orchestra (2003) but also winning the First Prize and Audience Prize of the Jazz Solo Piano Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, in 2005. He was part of projects as diverse as Ninety Miles (a recording with David Sánchez, Christian Scott and Stefon Harris) and Esencial (an album of compositions by revered Cuban classical guitarist, composer and conductor Leo Brouwer), both in 2011.
As for his popular music and on-the-job training, he was part of projects such as the Cuba volume of Rhythms del Mundo, which paired him with veterans from Buena Vista Social Club; and he spent three years in the touring band of singer Omara Portuondo, an opportunity he calls "a blessing." He has distilled all those experiences not only into a rich, personal style, as a player and composer; but it infused López-Nussa with an engaging attitude about making and sharing music.