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Frank Fernández

Pianist, composer, producer, musical director… Frank Fernandez has been in the limelight of many of the top moments of the history of Cuban music over the past 50 years; he entails a dimension that seems to go beyond everything possible in terms of creation.

At the moment of our conversation, Maestro Frank Fernandez was preparing for a performance he was very excited about. He was getting ready to return to the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Moscow –where he took his higher studies– and to meet up with his former professor Victor Merzhanov, one of the legends of the Russian music school. “It is one of the greatest honors I’ve ever been given, as they have asked me to play with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra at the newly-renovated Grand Hall of the Conservatory. This year, they have invited highly regarded artists of the world, because the [Hall’s] acoustics is said to be much better now –it was already one of the six best of the planet– but what makes it so transcendental to me is the fact they asked a Latin American to play Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2, who was one of top exponents of the Russian school.” His Moscow performance will be followed by another remarkable event, likely to become a milestone in Cuban discography: the recording –by the Colibri Label- of Beethoven’s five concertos with the National Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by maestro Enrique Perez Mesa. “In Cuba, they have never been recorded before and they were played for the first time by me, two nights in a row, 20 years ago. This is a challenge to any pianist, no matter how experienced or good he or she may be.” But this is just the beginning of an agenda so packed that it will not likely be fulfilled until after 2012 because of the complexity and scope of the projects envisioned. Frank said he is preparing a concert alongside Cuban flautist Niurka Gonzalez in which they will include the best scores of classic music written for duets; he will also work with Rumbatá, a Rumba group from the province of Camaguey, in the production of a ballet to be choreographed by Tania Bergara; moreover, he will participate in a project about the presence of musical elements in Voodoo religion, still widely practiced in the eastern region of the island, particularly in Santiago de Cuba. It’s not by chance that Fernandez is called for such diverse purposes, because this has been the hallmark of his creative career for more than 50 years, acknowledged, by the way, with the 2005 National Music Award. As a composer, Frank Fernandez has more than 650 works for different formats and of different musical genres to his credit. He is widely known for his music written for movies and television. About these creations he said: “I love it, commissioned music requires talent on the part of the composer; it takes twice as much effort. On one hand, you have to adhere to an image, a script, but if your work is not good enough or you don’t put all your talent into it so that such “adherence” comes out naturally and everything flows like a single unit, it will be a failure. In order to do music for films or any other audiovisual means, I think you have to have extra skills and that helps me develop myself, and I like that a lot.” Lots has been said about his achievements as a performer and musical producer, however, we don’t hear as much about his rather impressive work as a teacher. By putting 27 international awards under his belt with his students, in such prestigious events as Margaret Long, Montreaux and the Tchaikovsky contests, among others, Frank Fernandez shattered the stigma that only Cuban pianists with studies in the U.S. or Europe could be lauded outside their own island nation. For that reason, the SLOVA weekly in Moscow and periodicals in other nations labeled him “the founder of Cuba’s contemporary piano school.” His work as a teacher and his efforts in rescuing and promoting the Cuban greatest musical values (we owe to him, among other works, the first full edition of Danzas by Ignacio Cervantes and Contredanses by Manuel Saumell), show that in addition to being an exceptional artist, Frank Fernandez is convinced that our island is a musical empire still to discover. “I believe in my country, in my music. Cuba has been blessed with a gift for music. There are a lot of theories around that, but in Latin America, Cuba has always been a forerunner and a spearhead of musical development”.