Rizo, Marco

Marco Rizo was born in Santiago, Cuba, in 1920. His father Sebastian, the principal flutist with the Santiago Symphony, provided Rizo with his early music education. In addition to playing with his father’s jazzband, Rizo studied classical music, and became an important classical pianist by the age of 16. In 1938 he moved to Havana where he joined the city’s Philharmonic as the official pianist. He then immigrated to the United States in 1940, and studied at Juilliard until 1942, when he joined the war effort as a performer in the 2d Army Military Band.

After World War II, his childhood friend, Desi Arnaz, invited Rizo to join his band on tour. This engagement evolved into Rizo’s work on I Love Lucy as the musical director, a position he held for the entire run of the television series (1951-1957). During these years he continued his musical training at UCLA, working under Igor Stravinsky and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Rizo’s career also centered on the arrangement of music, and he arranged songs for a great number of personalities, as well as motion picture studios.

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