Elias Lopez Soba

Vocation

Puerto Rican musician and pianist, considered the second best native pianist of the twentieth century, after Jesus Maria Sanromá, and one of the most outstanding musicians of his country. Trained at the Longy School of Music in Massachusetts (1946-1951) and at Bennington College, University of Vermont, where he graduated Master of Arts in 1953 received a Fulbright scholarship that allowed him to continue piano studies at the prestigious Academy Music in Vienna, where he met music figures as Alfred Brendel and Zubin Mehta and where he obtained the magna degree cum laude and first medal at the International Music Competition in 1955. He then moved to Italy to perfect the interpretation under the direction of pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and in 1961 returned to Puerto Rico to teach in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the country. He has performed as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Symphony and Civic Boston symphony of Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and has regularly participated in concerts, recitals and musical conferences around the world, especially in Central America and Western Europe . In 1986 he earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Valladolid, and although his musical activity decreased in those years, in 1995 he won the gold medal at the International Competition for Interpretation of Geneva. Link to Wikipedia biography