Fernando López Mulens
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Fernando Luis Miguel Lopez Mulens. Pianist and composer. Accompanist of famous artists such as Pedro Vargas and Esther Borja, conductor and prodigal composer.
Born in San José de los Ramos, Matanzas, Cuba on September 29, 1919, he died in Puerto Rico on November 10, 1986. He studied music at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, in Cárdenas, Matanzas with the Catalan professor More Laugh.
In 1934 he moved to the city of Matanzas, and there he worked as an accompanying pianist; in 1939 he moved to Havana. In 1940 he presided over the jury of a song contest organized by the RHC Cadena Azul, in which the composer and pianist Bobby Capó won second prize with Rumbamatumba.
He was hired as a piano accompanist by the Mexican singer Pedro Vargas. He was then 17 years old and began to compose. Between 1944 and 1947 he toured Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Mexico City, Mexico and later the United States. Back in Cuba, in 1949 he worked as a piano accompanist for the Mexican singer María Luisa Landín, with whom he toured almost all the countries of Latin America.
In 1951 he traveled to Argentina, where he conducted the Radio Mundo orchestra, and also the Radio Belgrano Tropical Antillean Orchestra, from Buenos Aires. For several years he worked with the Argentine lyricist Roberto Lambertucci, which resulted in a considerable number of songs, among which is: De corazón a corazón, which enjoyed great popularity.
That same year he returns to Havana. He conducted several orchestras and traveled with maestro Ernesto Lecuona and Esther Borja to Spain in 1953, where he conducted the Chamber Orchestra of Madrid in the recording of the album "Rapsodía Cubana", by Esther Borja "which is probably the best album of Cuban music of all time", according to the authoritative opinion of Cristóbal Díaz Ayala.
He returned to Buenos Aires, and in 1957 he returned to Havana and replaced Bebo Valdés at the Cabaret Tropicana, where he was playing with the Armando Romeu orchestra, marrying the singer María de los Ángeles Rabí.
He founded the vocal quartet Los Modernistas in 1960 and in 1966 traveled to Spain. Later he toured New York, United States, and Argentina, until he settled definitively in Puerto Rico.
He passed away in Puerto Rico on November 10, 1986.