Marco Rizo

Although best known for composing the indelible theme to the television classic I Love Lucy, Marco Rizo was also a renowned classical pianist, deftly fusing traditional techniques with the more modern approaches of swing and Afro-Cuban jazz. Born in 1920 in Santiago, Cuba, he was the son of Sebastian Rizo, the principal flutist with the Santiago Symphony Orchestra; at the age of 12, Rizo entered Havana's National Conservatory of Music, where he studied under Spanish composer Pedro San Juan, and by his mid-teens he was widely regarded as one of the nation's most promising young...