Lorenzo Álvarez Florentín

At the age of 78 he was still very active musically: at that time he was conducting the José Asunción Flores folk orchestra at the National Conservatory of Music. In this institution he was teaching the violin, and also giving special performances, either with his son Luís, with Juan Cancio Barreto or with Berta Rojas. He died of a heart attack on July 9, 2014.

For several decades he concentrated on violin performance, joining well-known bands and later directing bands of his own. Then in 1970 he reduced his professional playing in order to deepen his violin studies and expand his knowledge of harmony and composition. He remained as a performer in the Symphony Orchestra of the City of Asunción (OSCA), of which he had been a member since its beginning in 1957, and stayed on until his retirement in 1992.

In the early 1960s Álvarez started the "International Rhythm Band", refreshing the Paraguayan dance repertoire with selections of polkas and foreign hits over more than a decade.

His priorities for continuing his musical education included improvements in his violin playing and studies of theory and sight-reading. He studied under Alfredo Kamprad at the Normal School of Music, where in 1955 he was appointed senior teacher of violin. He studied theory and sight-reading with Rodolfo Bagnati and harmony with Juan Carlos Moreno González, and a year later he completed his training studying composition with Florentín Giménez. In 1959 he won first prize in a composition contest organized by the Municipality of Asunción.

In 1952, Leonardo Alarcón formed a big band that bore his name and invited Lorenzo to be one of its members. Alarcón was a musician and composer, trumpeter in the Band of Police Musicians of the capital, and a former pupil of Salvador Déntice. From then on the young Lorenzo Álvarez had the opportunity to work professionally with true musical artists.

He stayed for more than a decade in the region where he was born, and then in 1950 he moved to Asunción to try for success there, offering his talent as a violinist in any band that needed his skills while he was completing his higher-level studies with the most recognized and renowned teachers.

Lorenzo Álvarez Florentín (August 10, 1926 – July 9, 2014) was a Paraguayan composer and violinist.