Rizo, Marco.

Perfomer, composer, and arranger, Marco Rizo was born in Santiago, Cuba in 1920.

Coming from a musical family, Rizo studied popular and classical music forms from an early age and he had become an accomplished classical pianist by the age of sixteen. In 1938 he moved to Havana where he joined that city's Philharmonic. He immigrated to the United States in 1940 and continued his studies at Juilliard until 1942, when he joined the war effort as a performer in the 2nd Army Military Band. After World War II, his childhood friend, Desi Arnaz, invited Rizo to join his band on tour. This engagement would evolve into the position of musical director on the I Love Lucy show for its entire run (1951-1957). During these years he continued his musical training at UCLA, working under Igor Stravinsky and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Rizo also arranged songs for a great number of personalities, as well as motion picture studios. In the early 1970s, one of Rizo's jobs was as the musical director, and sometimes performer, for the Royal Viking Line cruise ships. During the 1980s Rizo established the South American Music Project, Inc., an outreach program designed to teach public school students about Latin music. Rizo's prolific career as a composer and arranger generated some thirty records and he remained an active performer into his later years. His last album, titled Habaneras, was released shortly before his death in 1998.