Alfredo Diez Nieto is a Cuban composer, conductor and professor..
Academic background
Alfredo Diez Nieto studied sight singing, piano, music history, counterpoint, fugue, composition, orchestration and pedagogy with professors Juana Prendes, Rosario Iranzo, Jaime Prats, Amadeo Roldán and Pedro Sanjuán at Conservatorio Iranzo in Havana. At a later time, he attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York where he studied piano with Edward Steuerman, composition with Bernard Wagenaar, and orchestral conducting with Fritz Mahler.
Professor
Diez Nieto worked as professor of harmony, orchestration, piano, counterpoint and fugue, music history and composition in the Instituto Musical Kohly, the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory, the National Art Schools, and the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. In 1959, he was one of the founders of the Alejandro García Caturla Conservatory, in Marianao, Havana.
Composer
It is possible to observe in Diez Nieto's compositions a search for a Cuban identity through the utilization of typical elements from the Cuban folk music. Although, these elements are never used in its original state, but transformed through an imaginative process; as it is shown in his pieces "Los Diablitos", based on an Afro-Cuban Abakuá dance, or "Yo ta pedí un "aguinaldo" for voice and orchestra. His compositions have been performed in Spain, Russia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.
Conductor
One of the most significant contributions to the Cuban musical activity from Maestro Diez Nieto was the creation and conduction of the "Orquesta Popular de Conciertos", which was integrated by independent musicians and other members of several popular music orchestras. The concerts offered by that ensemble at "Iglesia de Paula" in Havana during 1967, as well as in the "Amadeo Roldán" Theatre in the same city, in 1972, are memorable. Maestro Diez Nieto has conducted the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Escuela Nacional de Música, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Camagüey, the Orquesta Popular de Conciertos, with which he interpreted pieces from Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frederick Handel, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Ignacio Cervantes, Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes y Alejandro García Caturla; and premiered his "Concert for organ and orquestra", with Manuel Suárez as a soloist. Diez Nieto accompanied the sopranos Lucy Provedo, Yolanda Hernández, Susy Oliva and Emelina López; pianists Roberto Urbay, Julio Hamel, Alberto Joya and Frank Emilio Flynn; violinists Rafael Lay, Armando Ortega and Celso Valdés Santandreu; flutists Richard Egües and Alfredo Portela; oboist María de los Ángeles Castellanos; guitarist Flores Chaviano; and clarinetist Rubén Noriega.
Other activities
Maestro Diez Nieto developed a systematic investigative work along with renowned musicologist Odilio Urfé, with which he founded the "Folkloric Invertigations Institute", that was renamed "Popular Music Seminar" since 1963.
Diez Nieto has received numerous recognitions for his contributions to teaching and developing the music of Cuba, among which we can mention de following:
