Amadeo Roldán

Amadeo Roldan and Gardes (Paris, June 12, 1900 - Havana, March 7, 1939) was a Cuban composer and violinist of contemporary music.

Born in France of Cuban parents, he studied music theory and violin at the Madrid Conservatory, graduating in 1916 and moving to Cuba towards the end of the decade. In the mid-1920s, he was appointed Concertmaster of the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra (he assumed the position of director in 1932) and founded the String Quartet of Havana. During that period, Roldán, one of the leaders of the Afro-Cuban movement, wrote the first symphonic pieces incorporating Afro-Cuban percussion instruments. The fifth and sixth of his Rhythms (1930) seem to be the first works in the tradition western classical music written solely for percussion.

Roldán's best-known composition is a work of 1928, the ballet La Rebambaramba, described by a critic of the moment as "a multicolored musicorama ... that turns an Afro-Cuban party into a magnificent display of Caribbean melorities, with the involving a varied fauna with native percussion effects, including a polyidal glissando in the jaw of an ass. " His plays were regularly performed at concerts sponsored by the Pan-American Association of Composers, founded by Henry Cowell, including the inaugural concert in New York in March of 1929. Notes

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