Aldo to play four concerts at San Francisco Jazz Festival

Havana-born pianist and composer Aldo López-Gavilán is an artist with his feet in two worlds, acclaimed for both his mastery of the Afro-Cuban jazz tradition as well as his stunning interpretations of the classical piano repertoire.

A true prodigy born to a musical family, his concert pianist mother introduced him to the piano at four and he began formal studies at seven, making his professional debut at 12 with Cuba’s Matanzas Symphony Orchestra and performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.3 with the National Symphony of Cuba at 17.

Since that auspicious start, López-Gavilán has toured the world and released six award-winning albums of original compositions with a number of Cuba’s finest instrumentalists, composed for film and theater, and been featured in ¡Manteca, Mondongo y Bacalao con Pan!, a documentary on the history of Latin jazz in Cuba directed by Pavel Giroud.

The pianist was invited by renowned conductor Claudio Abbado to perform as soloist in a special concert dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, and recently composed the music for Catherine Murphy’s documentary Maestra, which traces Cuba’s effort in the early 1960s to abolish illiteracy after the Revolution.

These two nights present the West Coast debut of a rising Cuban superstar and renaissance man.

You can buy tickets for these concerts here