Arturo Sandoval is a renowned and celebrated Cuban jazz trumpeter and pianist. He was born on November 6, 1949, in Artemisa, Havana, Cuba.
A graduate of the National School of Art, he was part of the Cuban Modern Music Orchestra and in 1974 became one of the first members, alongside saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, of the famous Cuban jazz orchestra Irakere, founded and led by pianist and composer Chucho Valdés. With Irakere, Sandoval achieved great international success.
In the late 1970s, he met Dizzy Gillespie in Havana, one of the most significant figures in the development of modern jazz and an experimentalist of Afro-Cuban jazz. Together with Gillespie, he performed with the Finnish radio and television orchestra, and in New York, he played at the Village Gate with the trumpeter Jon Faddis, a student of the American artist. In 1990, he became a member of the United Nations Orchestra, conducted by the American.
In 1981, he founded his own group. He has been invited as a soloist by numerous orchestras and has shared the stage with jazz greats such as Maynard Ferguson, Stan Getz, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, and the Cuban Jorge Luis Prats, among others.
He has participated in jazz festivals in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Norway, and England; at Ronnie Scott's clubs in England, and at New Morning in Geneva. As a composer and performer, he boasts several film soundtracks, including "Vampires in Havana I," "The Pérez Family," "The Kings of Mambo," and "Havana."
He emigrated to the United States in 1990, settling in Miami. There, he became a professor at Florida International University and recorded his first album in 1991: "Flight to Freedom" for the GRP label.
In April 2006, he opened a music venue in Miami Beach called The Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club, which has hosted stars of the genre, including Sandoval himself.
Sandoval is highly regarded and influential within the Cuban community in Florida due to his strong statements against the Cuban government and his support for the recently emerged movements in Cuba that advocate for change on the island. He joined calls for the release of activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. The musician has been unable to return to Cuba for 31 years.
In July 2020, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood alongside Cubans Ana de Armas and casting director Libia Batista Mora.
He has won the Grammy Award nine times and has been nominated 17 times. He has also won 6 Billboard awards and one Emmy award.
In 2018, he stated in an interview with the Argentine branch of Billboard: "I would like to someday return to a Cuba where human rights are respected, but I don't think I will see it. I'm no longer 20; I'm turning 70... I hope that one day, before I die, I can return and see a prosperous Cuba."
Sandoval himself revealed on one occasion that during the 1970s, when he was a young twenty-something completing his three years of mandatory military service, he was imprisoned for listening to jazz on a foreign radio station.
In January 2020, the Cuban state-run press referred to him as a "repentant communist."
Sandoval was one of the guests at a virtual meeting organized by the European Parliament titled "Homeland and Life: Art and Politics United for Cuba," which was streamed for free on YouTube. The event also featured artists Yotuel Romero, Willy Chirino, Gente de Zona, Anamely Ramos, and scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola.
