Billo Frómeta

Luis María " Billo " Frómeta Pereyra (* November 15, 1915 in Santo Domingo; † 5 May 1988 in Caracas ) was a Dominican conductor and musician.

Frómeta grew up in San Francisco de Macoris, where he studied composition and solfège at Sixto Brea, harmony and composition with Rafael Pimentel and clarinet and saxophone with Oguis Negrete. From this time dated his friendship with pianist Simon Damiron and bandleader Rafael Minaya. At the age of 15, he founded the Banda del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Ciudad Trujillo.

In 1933 he went to Santo Domingo where he gave guitar lessons and played saxophone in a theater orchestra. At the instigation of the violinist Freddy Coronado, he founded the group Conjunto Tropical. With the engineering students Damiron and Coronado and Ernesto Chapuseaux who, like him, studied medicine, Frómeta founded the Santo Domingo Jazz Band, which he directed until Damiron, after its emigration to Puerto Rico. For three years, he then because of his medical studies, gave up his musical activities.

1937 traveled Frómeta with the Santo Domingo Jazz Band to Venezuela, where they debuted under the name Billo 's Happy Boys in Caravas. Until its dissolution in 1939, the band performed regularly here on the Roof Garden. In 1940 he founded the Billo 's Caracas Boys, whose founding members, among others Kuroky Sánchez, Freddy Coronado and César Espín included. The orchestra has collaborated with musicians such as Luis Alfonso Larrain, Pedro J. Belisario, Aldemaro Romero, Chucho Sanoja, Rafael Minaya and Damaso Perez Prado. From 1945 to 1957, the orchestra performed in the program A gozar muchachos of Radio Caracas. 1954 La Revista de Billo was shown on Venezuelan television. After the fall of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958 Frómeta a supporter of the regime, a performance ban was under the charge of having been issued.

He then went to Cuba in Havana and led an orchestra of Cuban musicians. It also made recordings with the singers Víctor Piñeyro, Alberto Beltrán, Carlos Díaz Pío Leiva. After his appearance ban was lifted, Frómete 1960 returned to Caracas back. With his newly formed orchestra, he worked with singers such as Felipe Pirela, José Luis Rodríguez ( El Puma), Cheo García Morales and Memo.

During the preparations for a concert that the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela in 1988 during his fifty year anniversary in 1988 at the Teatro Teresa Carreño should be, Frómeta suffered a stroke, he died a few days later.