Marco Rizo Ayala (November 30, 1920 – September 8, 1998) was a Cuban-born pianist, composer, and arranger. He mastered the 19th century works of composers

Manuel Saumell Manuel Saumell Robredo (19 April 1818 – 14 August 1870), was a Cuban composer known for his invention and development of genuinely creolized forms of music. For this reason he gets the credit for being the first to cultivate Cuban musical natio ...

and

Ignacio Cervantes Ignacio Cervantes Kawanag (Havana, 31 July 1847 – Havana, 29 April 1905) was a Cuban pianist and composer. He was influential in the creolization of Cuban music. A child prodigy, he was taught by pianist Juan Miguel Joval, later by compose ...

. He is best known for his role as

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

, arranger and orchestrator for the American television

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

I Love Lucy ''I Love Lucy'' is an American television sitcom that originally aired on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes, spanning six seasons. The show starred Lucille Ball, her husband, Desi Arnaz, along wit ...

'' which aired from 1951 to 1957. Throughout his career which combined the techniques of his classical training with

Afro-Cuban Afro-Cubans or Black Cubans are Cubans of West African ancestry. The term ''Afro-Cuban'' can also refer to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community and the combining of native African and other cultural el ...

and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

rhythms, Rizo recorded nearly 30 albums. He was born in

Santiago de Cuba Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana. The municipality extends over , and contains ...

, Oriente,

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

Early life

Rizo's father, Sebastian, a flutist with the Santiago Symphony Orchestra, served as his son's first musical instructor. In 1932, Marco moved to

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

to attend the National

Conservatory of Music A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department (of a larger i ...

, where he studied under the tutelage of Spanish composer Pedro San Juan. He remained there for six years, and in 1938 was named the official pianist of the Havana Philharmonic Orquestra, performing under the direction of

Ernesto Lecuona Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (; August 7, 1896 – November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist, many of whose works have become standards of the Latin, jazz and classical repertoires. His over 600 compositions include songs and zarzuelas as ...

. In 1939, he performed duo piano recitals with Ernesto Lecuona. Rizo was considered Cuba's most important concert pianist by the age of 16. Rizo became interested in jazz through his work with his father's Rizo-Ayala Jazz Band. In 1940, he migrated to the United States, having received a scholarship to the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...

of Music in New York City. There, he studied under

Rosina Lhévinne Rosina Lhévinne (née Bessie; March 29, 1880 – November 9, 1976) was a Russian pianist and famed pedagogue born in Kyiv, Russian Empire. Early life, education and family Rosina Bessie was the younger of two daughters of Maria (née Katz) and ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Rizo performed and worked with the 2nd Army Military Band.

Professional career

At the end of the war, Rizo's childhood friend

Desi Arnaz Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III (March 2, 1917 – December 2, 1986) was a Cuban-born American actor, bandleader, and film and television producer. He played Ricky Ricardo on the American television sitcom '' I Love Lucy'', in which he c ...

asked him to join as the pianist and orchestrator for his band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. He toured the U.S. with the band until 1950. When Arnaz started production of ''

'', he once again turned to Rizo, hiring him to be the pianist and orchestrator for the show between 1951 and 1957. Rizo also made several on-camera appearances on the show throughout its run on television. Contrary to popular belief he did not write the ''I Love Lucy'' theme by himself; it had music by Rizo, Eliot Daniel and Desi Arnaz with lyrics by Harold Adamson. The lyrics were only heard once on the series, in the season three episode "Lucy's Last Birthday" made in 1953. After the ''

'' show ended, he remained with

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

and worked as pianist-arranger for

Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in Bob Hope filmography, more than 70 short and ...

. While in Los Angeles, he attended

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

and studied under Igor Stravinsky and

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (3 April 1895 – 16 March 1968) was an Italian composer, pianist and writer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In ...

. Rizo composed motion picture music for Columbia, Paramount and

MGM Studios Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...

. He continued his concert career in 1960, playing the music of Lecuona and other Cubans. In the early 1970s, Rizo worked as the musical director for the Royal Viking Sea cruise ship. Throughout his career, he arranged for hundreds of top artists:

Carmen Miranda Carmen Miranda, (; born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha, 9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, dancer, Broadway actress and film star who was active from the late 1920s onwards. Nicknamed "The Br ...

, Danny Kaye,

Xavier Cugat Xavier Cugat (; 1 January 1900 – 27 October 1990) was a Spanish musician and bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a leading figure in the spread of Latin music. In New York City ...

Yma Sumac Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo (September 13, 1922 (birth certificate) or September 10, 1922 (later documents) – November 1, 2008), known professionally as Yma Sumac (), was a Peruvian-American coloratura soprano. She was one ...

, and Paquito D’Rivera, among many others. Some of his most memorable piano and orchestral compositions include “Suite Campesina,” “Ñañigo,” “Danzas Cubanas,” “Jose Marti-Sinfonia Cubana,” “Broadway Concerto,” “Suite of the Americas,” “Suite Española,” and “Visions of New York.”

Legacy

In the early 1980s, he founded the non-profit organization “The Marco Rizo Latin American Music Project” (SAMPI), which aimed to spread appreciation for

Latin music Latin music ( Portuguese and es, música latina) is a term used by the music industry as a catch-all category for various styles of music from Ibero-America (including Spain and Portugal) and the Latino United States inspired by Latin Amer ...

and culture to students in universities, colleges, high schools, and public schools. In 1989, Rizo won the Silver Medal of the French Academy of the Arts, Sciences and Letters. He died of a heart attack in 1998 at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. His sister, Vilma Rizo, donated many of his papers, files, and compositions to the Music Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts located at

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Among the various items in the collection is an unpublished biography that Rizo wrote of his longtime friend Desi Arnaz entitled “The Desi I Knew” (1991).

References

Sources/External links

Marco Rizo at AllMusic

Finding Aid for Marco Rizo Papers
in th
Music Division
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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rizo, Marco 1920 births 1998 deaths 20th-century classical composers 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century male musicians Cuban classical pianists Cuban composers Male composers Cuban pianists Male classical composers Male classical pianists Contradanza People from Santiago de Cuba People from Manhattan United States Army personnel of World War II United States Army soldiers Cuban emigrants to the United States Cuban male musicians