Adalberto Álvarez.
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Adalberto Cecilio Alvarez Zayas. He was a Cuban musician, composer, arranger and conductor. Founder of two of the most successful Cuban bands of all time: Son 14 and Adalberto Álvarez y su Son. For more than four decades, his music remained the preference of the Cuban dancing public, which he shocked with already classic songs of popular music such as And what do you want them to give you and A dance the touch touches. He studied at the National School of Art (ENA) from 1966 to 1972. He was a professor of Musical Literature at the Provincial School of Art of Camagüey from 1973 to 1978. He began his artistic career as a paila player in 1957.
Later he was arranger and director of his father's group, Enrique Fortunato Álvarez (Nené), Avance Juvenil, in Camagüey. The Rumbavana ensemble made one of his first compositions popular for him: With a little kiss, my love (1971). In 1978, at the proposal of the Santiago composer Rodulfo Vaillant, he founded the group Son 14, which debuted in Santiago de Cuba on November 11 of the same year. In a search, through foreign radio, mainly Radio Rumbos, from Caracas, Venezuela, he learned about the salsa boom. An important moment in his career was the contact in Santiago de Cuba with Dimensión Latina and its singer Andy Montañez.
In 1980 Son 14 participated in the Third International Fair of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and performed at the Poliedro de Caracas. On this occasion Adalberto offered a dance music orchestration course in the Horacio Petterson room, of the Ateneo of the Venezuelan capital. In this exchange with musicians and specialists, he had the opportunity to reflect on the son, the source of the montuno and the guaracha, for which he used recordings by the National Septet, Barbarito Diez and the National Symphony Orchestra, with works by composers who or otherwise they had worked with popular art materials.
On February 25, 1984, his second group debuted in Santiago de las Vegas: Adalberto Álvarez y su Son, made up of Adalberto Álvarez, director and pianist; Jorge Machado, bass; José Martín, guitar and Tres (musical instrument); José Fernández and Onelio Carrillo, trumpets; Dagoberto Rodríguez and Hugo Morejón, trombone; Ubaldo Canes, drummer; Celestino Alfonso, bongo; Calixto Oviedo, paila; Narciso Guanchí, Héctor Wederbroun (Anderson) and Félix Baloy, singers. With this group he was looking for new sound possibilities, since he used two trombones, a tres, a pan, trumpets, piano, double bass, bongo drum and drum, with which he achieved greater rhythmic, melodic and harmonic richness.