Artists & company
Arturo O’Farrill, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. He received his formal musical education at the Manhattan School of Music, Brooklyn College Conservatory, and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. His professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.
In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music.
In December 2010 Arturo traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal Cultural Ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students, bringing local musicians from Cuba to the US and American musicians to Cuba. Concurrently, Arturo is the Director of Jazz Studies at CUNY Brooklyn College.
An avid supporter of all the Arts, Arturo has performed with Ballet Hispanico and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written two ballets. The Alvin Ailey Dance Company is touring a ballet entitled Open Door, choreographed by Ron Brown to several of Arturo’s compositions and recordings.
Arturo has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, Symphony Space, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from Cuba: The Conversation Continues took the 2016 Grammy Award (his fourth) for Best Instrumental Composition.
