Armando Alfonso (b. Paris, 1931) is a Spanish musician who has pursued various fields in the musical profession. Trained in Spain, France and Italy, he began his career as the conductor of Pilar López’s Ballet Español, with which he toured Europe and Asia. In 1968 he was appointed chief conductor of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, remaining in the post until 1985, at the same time as holding the chair of Harmony, Counterpoint and Fugue, and Composition in the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
As orchestral conductor he has taken up the baton in Europe, Asia and North America, working together with the best Spanish soloists and renowned figures from other nationalities such as Dimitri Bashkirov, Vladimir Spivakov, András Schiff, André Navarra, Rudolf Buchbinder, Christian Zacharias, Simca Heled and many more. He is the author of works for the piano like the Suite, Variaciones sobre el “Arrorró” (written in memory of his father, the pianist, composer and professor Javier Alfonso) or Preludios para pianistas amigos, various song cycles accompanied by piano or orchestra, Cinco Piezas para guitarra, Sinfonía para orquesta de cuerda, Cuarteto, etc.
Apart from cooperating on numerous occasions with Radio Nacional de España – particularly with a large cycle dedicated to music from the Canary Islands – his research in the field of musicology has produced a well-documented biography of Carlos Guigou, the French composer from the first half of the 19th century, and an autobiography – and at the same time biography of his father –, Recuerdos de dos vidas de músico (Javier Alfonso–Armando Alfonso). He is a member of the Royal Canarian Academy of Fine Arts of St. Michael the Archangel.
