Contrabassist.

Writes and arranges music. Plays the guitar, piano and percussion instruments. He also sings, teaches music and plays the flute. Leader of the Che Guevara Band project.  

Born in Havana, Cuba on 20th January 1971.  

Since his early childhood he has been surrounded by music because most of his family are professional musicians. No one knows who was the first musician in the family. His paternal grandfather, Abelardo Alfonso Domech, played the tres (a Cuban folk string instrument), guitar, contrabass and percussion; he also sang. When he was a young man, he could play at a party on his own all night and his voice could be heard from far away.

 Most of the musucians in Abelardo's family are on his mother's side: her great-grandfather was an excellent clarinetist by the name of Aurelio López, his son Pedro López was a famous contrabassist. Pedro's three children - Orestes, Coralia and Israel (Cachao) became a pianist and composer (Coralia), a very well-known contrabassist (Israel, who now lives in the United States) and Abelardo's grandfather Orestes was a composer, arranger, cellist, pianist, contrabassist, guitarist and flutist. He wrote a piece called Mambo in 1937 and will forever remain part of the history of Cuban music as the creator of the mambo style and the founder of the cha cha cha. Orestes has six children: pianist Herlinda, contrabassist Orlando (Cachaito), contrabassist Orestes, pianist Lidia, percussionist Minerva (Abelardo's mum) and contrabassist Georgina. The complete list of musicians in the family would be enormous; it includes Abelardo's contemporaries - contrabassists, guitarrist, pianists, percussionists and drummers.  

When Abelardo was four years old, his mother started teaching him percussion as well as solfeggio. At ten he took some guitar lessons, and at 11 he started his studies at the Guillermo Tomás music school, where his uncle Orlando López taught him to play the contrabass; after that, he went to the Amadeo Roldán school, where he was taught by maestro Angel Nenóv.  

Between 1983 and 1989 he took first prize at numerous national children's musical contests for his singing and contrabass playing.  

In 1989, after a year of training with Manuel Valdés, Abelardo won a Cuban national contest of violinists, violists, cellists and contrabassists and was sent to study at the Moscow Conservatory.  

Abelardo has been living in Moscow since 1989.  

On 20th December 1993, he graduated in absentia with honours from the Moscow Conservatory under Professor Y.A. Kolosov.  

For reasons beyond his control, Abelardo had to take all the examinations for the second term of year 3, all of year 4 and all of year 5 within two and a half months!  

In 1995, he took the sixth place at the first memorial international contest of contrabassists dedicated to Sergey Kusevitsky, which was held in Moscow.  

His professional credits include the Columbus and Ensemble XXI chamber orchestras, Olga Arefyeva's group, Guja Burduli, the Alexander F. Sklyar Trio, and Irina Bogushevskaya.  

In 2000 and 2001, he worked with the Vivaldi chamber orchestra in Moscow.

In 2001, he formed the Che Guevara Band and has been performing as part of the band ever since in Moscow and many other Russian cities and towns.

In 2003, he presented a programme about artists - "Staircase to Heaven" on the Enio TV channel.  
He has had two albums published: Superposición 2000 and Victoria. He also took part in the recordings of numerous musical projects as a session musician.  

Abelardo enjoys playing classical contrabass solos as well as playing in orchestras, playing and singing Cuban and Latin American music, playing jazz, writing and arranging music, teaching music and languages, and studio recording. Generally speaking, he lis interested in anything which could further his development as a professional musician.  

Abelardo believes that music is a universal language which can help us convey all our feelings and that, whatever the genre or musical style, music must always be beautiful and meaningful.  

For Abelardo, music is the meaning of life!