Harold Lopez Nussa

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Harold Lopez Nussa
Origin	Havana, Cuba
Genre(s)	Jazz Cuban Jazz Modern Jazz
Label(s)	Harmonia Mundi

Harold Lopez Nussa is a jazz pianist who plays Cuban music and lives in a little apartment in Havana’s Vedado neighbourhood in Cuba. The 24-year-old pianist enjoys a double upbringing, Cuban and French through his grandmother. He was born in a family of musicians: His mother is a piano teacher, his father and brother, both called Ruy, are renowned percussionists in the genre, and his uncle, Hernán, is one of Cuba’s finest pianists. Harold’s family has greatly influenced the pianist he is today “Ever since I was small, I’ve always listened to music, it surrounded me and it’s part of my life”. Harold first studied classical music for about thirteen years. He went to the Manuel Saumell Conservatoire where he practised and was tutored by professor Teresita Junco “she has been a special guide and teacher who knows what one needs, always with an appropriate idea of each step to take, of each obstacle to overcome”. But, he only recently became interested in jazz and Cuban music because “there is no school that teaches that kind of music”. Harold still dearly loves classical music and plays once a year with the Philharmonic orchestra. He is also developing another passion “I’m spending more and more time composing, playing Latin Jazz, Cuban Jazz because I like it even more.”

Throughout his student life, Harold has won national competitions such as the Amadeo Roldán Grand Prize when he was only 10 years old; he won the first prize in the Ibero-American Piano Competition and was a finalist in the Citta di Senigalia in Italy. He also performed the Ravel’s Concerto in G Major with the Matanzas Symphony Orchestra conducted by the maestro Enrique Pérez Mesa, and was selected to accompany pianist Ulises Hernández in the 2003 premiere in Cuba of the integral works of Hector Villa-Lobos.

In 2005, at the 39th Montreux Jazz Piano Competition in Switzerland, Harold, aged 22, won the first prize. “I was delighted as Montreux is one of the most important jazz events in the world and it was a true pleasure to be there, in the same place as the top jazz musicians…” Harold offered the jury and the public of Montreux, a masterly interpretation of Memories of Tomorrow, by Keith Jarrett; Footprints, by W. Shorter; and “E’cha,” his own work. He won the first place in the competition demonstrating the breadth of his musical inspiration as well as his mastery of modern jazz, indigenous Cuban rumba and just about anything in between.

Harold López-Nussa gave a concert in the 2006 Montreux Festival and recorded with Claude Nobs support, “Sobre et 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 25th October on Harmonia Mundi. Harold is finishing is musical studies at the Instituto Superior de Arte and thrives on his family’s encouragement, which in the end may be worth more than all the first-place prizes in the world.