Biography
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Born
27 June 1940
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Born In
Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania
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Died
5 December 1997 (aged 57)
Eugen Cicero, of Romanian descent, was born Eugen Ciceu in 1940, started playing piano at age four, gave his first Mozart Concerto with the Symphonic Orchestra of his hometown, Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg), at age six and by the time he was 14 he was widely known as a child prodigy. His parents helped him develop this gift and hone his skills and when he was 11 they sent him to study with Aurelia Cionca, renowned in her native Romania as an excellent pianist who herself was taught by a student of Franz Liszt. Later Cicero studied with Anna Pitis who is said to have “initiated him into the virtuoso traditions personified by Franz Liszt” and later Cicero studied instrumentation and composition at the National Conservatory in Bucharest.
In the early 1960s, Cicero was on tour in East Berlin and managed to escape to the West. It was Charly Antolini, the drummer on most of Cicero’s later recordings, that got him a deal with Saba/MPS and the rest, as they say, is history.
Many of his recordings are jazz adaptations of classical music.
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