Arturo Sandoval is a renowned and renowned Cuban jazz trumpeter and pianist. He was born on November 6, 1949 in Artemisa, Havana, Cuba.
Graduated from the National School of Art, he was part of the Cuban Modern Music Orchestra and in 1974 he was one of the first members along with the saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera of the famous Cuban jazz orchestra Iraqis, founded and directed by the pianist and composer Chucho Valdes. With irakere, Sandoval achieved great worldwide success.
At the end of the 70's he met in Havana Dizzy Gillespie, one of the most relevant figures in the development of modern jazz and experimenter of Afro-Cuban jazz. Together with Gillespie he played with the Finnish Radio and Television Orchestra, and in New York he performed at the Village Gate with the trumpeter Jon Faddis, student of the American. In 1990 he was part of the United Nation Orchestra, directed by the North American.
In 1981 he founded his own group. He has been invited as a soloist in numerous orchestras and has shared the stage with jazz greats such as Maynard Ferguson, Stan Getz, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughin , the Cuban guy Jorge Luis Prats, among others.
He has participated in the jazz festivals of Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Norway, England; at the Ronnie Scott clubs, England, and at the New Morning, Geneva. As a composer and performer he has several film soundtracks to his credit, such as "Vampires in Havana I", "La Familia Pérez", "Los Reyes del Mambo" and "La Habana"
He emigrated to the United States in 1990, settling in Miami. There he was 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 under the name of The Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club through which stars of the genre have paraded, including Sandoval himself.
Sandoval is very loved and influential within the Cuban community in Florida for his staunch statements against the Cuban government and his support for the recently emerged movements in Cuba that fight for change within the island. He joined the requests for the release of the activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. The musician has not been able to return to Cuba for 31 years.
In July 2020, he was invited to join the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences along with the Cubans Ana de Armas and the Cuban casting director Libia Batista Mora.
He has won the Grammy nine times and has been nominated 17 times. He has also won 6 Billboard Awards and an Emmy Award.
In 2018 he declared in an interview with the Argentine affiliate of Billboard magazine: “I would like to one day be able to return to a Cuba where human rights are respected, but I don't think I will see it. I'm not 20 years old anymore, I'm turning 70... I hope that one day before I die I can return and see Cuba prosperous,"
Sandoval himself revealed on one occasion that during the 1970s, when he was a young man in his twenties who was completing his three years of mandatory military service, he was imprisoned for listening to jazz on a foreign station.
In January 2020, the Cuban official press called him a “repentant communist.”
Sandoval was one of the guests at a virtual meeting organized by the European Parliament under the title 'Homeland and Life, art and politics united by Cuba', which was broadcast for free on YouTube and in which the artists also participated. Yotuel Romero, Willy Chirino, Gente de Zona, Anamely Ramos and the scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola.
