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JOSÉ ECHÁNIZ Cuban pianist José Echániz was born in the town of Guanabacoa on June 4, 1905. Guanabacoa is a municipality or borough of the city of La Habana which dates back to pre-colonization times. In the language of the Taínos, one of Cuba’s three aboriginal tribes - the Siboney and the Guanahatabey tribes being the other two - Guanabacoa means land of hills and rivers, named so because of the abundance of small rivers and medium sized hills in the region. Guanabacoa is also the birthplace of Cuba’s greatest composer, Ernesto Lecuona, pianist-chanteur Ignacio Villa aka Bola de Nieve, and entertainer Rita Montaner.

Echániz received his first piano lessons from his own father. He then entered the Conservatorio Falcón in La Habana, from which he graduated with the title Professor of Piano at the age of fourteen. In 1922, at the age of seventeen, he made his American debut at Town Hall in New York. He toured the world with Tito Schipa, appearing with the famous Italian tenor as his accompanist in joint recitals, and in recordings. While touring with Schipa, Mr. Echániz also gave solo recitals.

During his career José Echániz appeared in the Unites States and in Europe as a recitalist, and also as soloist with major orchestras under the batons of conductors such as Gonzalo Roig, José Iturbi, Rudolf Ganz, Erick Leinsdorf, Paul White, Howard Hanson, Frederick Stock, Vladimir Golschmann, Sir Eugene Goosens, Dmitri Mitropoulos, Paul White, Guy Fraser Harrison, Laszlo Somogyi, Theodore Bloomfield, and Massimo Preccia. He taught piano at his own studio in Havana from 1924 to 1932. From 1948 to 1954, he was the conductor of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra in Michigan. Mr. Echániz held a professorship at the Conservatory of Music at James Milliken University in Decatur, Illinois for twelve years, later joining the faculty of the Eastman School of Music in a full-time teaching position, all the while continuing his active career as recitalist and soloist in the United States and abroad. Mr. Echániz was also the founder of the Lake Placid Chamber Music Festival and School. From 1963 until his death he was its director, and he was also the pianist for the Lake Placid Trio. During the regular academic year, Mr. Echániz was also active in clinics and music workshops throughout the United States.

He made last appearance in his native land in 1958, at the Teatro Auditórium in La Habana, choosing never to return to Cuba as long as the Castro dictatorship maintained totalitarian control of the island. José Echániz had been scheduled to give his first New York recital in eleven years in December of 1968, but on the night of the performance he was so ill from what was believed to be Hong Kong flu that he was able to perform only the first half of the program at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. All upcoming appearances were cancelled, as was the scheduled Kilbourn Hall recital in celebration of his twenty-fifth anniversary on the Eastman School of Music faculty. Instead, to honor his twenty five years at the school, Walter Hendl, then director of the Eastman School of Music, gave a dinner for Mr. Echániz at Hutchinson House on November 4, 1969, with some two hundred guests in attendance. José Echániz died on December 30, 1969 in his Pittsford home, after suffering from cancer for several months. Although justly renowned for his interpretations of Cuban and Spanish music, José Echániz was a critically acclaimed interpreter of Mozart and Liszt, who believed in thoroughly grounding his students in the classical repertoire.

While still a teenager, José Echániz made his first recordings for the Ampico and Duo-Art companies. They consist of the standard piano literature, his arrangements of the works of other composers, and his own compositions. The thirties saw him move into the era of electrical recordings, which he made as soloist for Columbia. He also made several recordings as accompanist for Tito Schipa, available today in CD as well as digital download formats.

The bulk of his discography is on the now defunct Westminster label. Beginning in 1953, and ending in 1958, these now classic recordings have become cult and collector items. Inexplicably, the Universal Group, which today owns the copyright to the entire Westminster label catalog, has never released a single José Echániz disc on CD or on any other digital format. In the past, a handful of Westminster recordings by other artists have been released on Universal’s Decca and Deutsche Grammophon labels, but never Echániz. This is a shame, as many of his recordings still stand today as the standard and the point of reference for subsequent recordings of the same works, as is the case with his all Lecuona disc (Westminster WL 5343), and his rendition of the 12 Danzas Españolas by Granados (Westminster WL 5181). In the sixties and seventies Echániz made several highly praised recordings for the now also defunct Musical Heritage Society, including an all Liszt recital recorded in one single take, something unheard of in today’s copy/paste recording industry. It is not known who owns the Musical Heritage masters today, or if they still exist. Those interested in the digital release of the Westminster discography of José Echániz are urged to contact Eloquence, Decca, and Deutsche Grammophon. These three labels are the legal owners of the material.