MADRID, Spain.- Author of representative pieces of Cuban songwriting, repeated from one generation to the next, such as “I can’t be happy” (1954) and “I wait for you in eternity” (1963), the composer, pianist, instrumentalist and conductor Adolfo José Guzmán González, was born in Havana on May 13, 1920.
He began studying piano at the age of eight, later taking classes in harmony, instrumentation, and composition. He began his professional artistic life as a pianist accompanying the singer Floro Acosta, with whom he formed the Ideal duo, and then in 1938, the Argentine ensemble Los Románticos Gauchos.
He appeared on the radio stations CMW Cadena Roja and RHC Cadena Azul; from 1943 to 1948 he was musical director of Mil Diez. At the same time, from 1945 to 1946 he conducted the orchestras of the Zombie Club, that of the Montmartre cabaret, and that of the América, Fausto, Campoamor and Teatro Nacional theaters (currently the Gran Teatro de La Habana “Alicia Alonso”).
He did orchestrations for Ignacio Villa (Snowball) and the Mexican singers Jorge Negrete and Tito Guízar. He was President of the Cuban Institute of Musical Rights; since 1961, and for decades, he served as musical director of the television program Cuban albumled by Esther Borja.
At the end of the sixties he directed the Los Modernistas quartet. He also led the Riverside and Habana Casino orchestras.; he founded the Radio and Television Orchestra, which he directed for years. He had the musical direction of important events in the country such as the Varadero International Song Festival. He traveled in artistic functions to Czechoslovakia, France, Canada and Poland.
Other of his unforgettable compositions are “Prophecy” (1955), “My heart and I” (1956), “Free from sin” (1958), “It’s so easy to lie” (1962), “Love, that’s love” (1965) and “Oblivion” (1971). He also composed music for ballet, for adventures like Captain Storm, The Insurgents, The Three Musketeers; themes for piano and orchestra and tangos.
Adolfo Guzmán passed away on July 30, 1976 at the age of 56. In homage to his memory, in 1978 the Adolfo Guzmán Cuban Music Contest was created with the identifying theme of “I can’t be happy”.
