Perhaps because he was born between native rhythms of son, rumba, nengón, kiribá, or changüí, traditional trova, or his freshest music style, Ernesto Oliva Figueredo said that his fate was sealed.
Perhaps because he was born between native rhythms of son, rumba, nengón, kiribá, or changüí, traditional trova, or his freshest music style, Ernesto Oliva Figueredo said that his fate was sealed.
The legacy that he saw while growing up in the troubadour Josue Oliva, his father, who is a renowned singer-songwriter of the city of Guantanamo, I could inherit his best song to the old town square or the challenge with his peers, so he changed three years of classical piano at the University of Arts in Cuba to start another five in the composition that he decided it is his way....
E: “I began studying to become a pianist-concert at the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA, in Spanish) in 2007 and used to escape from the basic piano classes to maestro Juan Piñera’s classes, which usually characterize the chair of composition as Shindler List... from there the bug of the composition began to enrapture me, it already encouraged me from years before, at the secondary level, in Holguin province, and I set out to do a work, a project titled Suite Sinco ... pa’Changuiza. By this I tried to mix this hybrid search of what is concert music with traditional musical styles of my land in Guantanamo. And then I called attention to my teacher, I presented the project and got the Musicalia Prize 2009, the chair of composition opened the doors to me and what I had thought at the time arose: to change the classes of piano for composition.”
J: So, that change promptly... why?
E: “Yeah ... after winning the award, I presented premiere of the work at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Havana, all that motivation and encouragement of everyone telling me about my work enraptured me, and even celebrities that's when I began to change my perspective and I realize what I really wanted to do. I felt that I had studied piano until that moment was I needed to do what I wanted to do and to that extent I no longer wanted to be a concert pianist-- neither jazzman- so I started from there I tried to find that mixture of concert music that I’ve been academically studied since I was seven years old, first in the Vocational School of Art, the middle level and finally at the ISA.
J: There is when the Ernesto you had inside and the one who has won many prizes stand out ... as confirmation that it was the way? How about the Grand Prix at the 22sd Audiovisual Exhibition "Almacen de Imagen" or the Coral Award for the Best Documentary at the 34th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, two important awards in the world of movies, two cardinal points that show that you can become a novice filmmaker in Cuba?
E: “I had been doing some…”
Translation: Liubis Balart Martínez