Lico Jiménez

José Manuel Jiménez Berroa (7 December 1851 – 15 January 1917), known as Lico Jiménez, was a Cuban pianist and composer. Early years José Manuel “Lico” Jiménez Berroa was born in Trinidad, Cuba, Las Villas province into a musical family. He was the son of Maria Andrea Berroa and violinist Jose Julian Jiménez and was baptized in 1852 at the Parochial Church of the Santísima Trinidad. His grandfather was Francisco Nicasio Jiménez, orchestra and band leader. Jiménez studied music as a child with his father and grandparents and his aunt, Cuban musician and composer Catalina Berroa, and at the age of 15 was hired as an accompanist for a concert at Palacio Brunet by visiting German violinist Karl Werner. At the recommendation of Werner, Lico’s father, Jose Julian Jiménez, who was the first Black musician in the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, concertized to raise the funds to send his two sons, Lico and Nicasio Jiménez to Europe in 1867, where Lico studied piano with the Carl Armbrust in Hamburg, Carl Reinecke and Ignaz Moscheles at the Leipzig Conservatory and in Paris with Antoine Marmontel. Jiménez fathered a son, Angel Zambrana, in Trinidad, Cuba, whose many descendants currently th