Arturo Sandoval is a renowned and acclaimed 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 renowned Cuban jazz orchestra Irakere, founded and led by pianist and composer Chucho Valdés. With Irakere, Sandoval achieved significant worldwide success.
At the end of the 1970s, he met Dizzy Gillespie in Havana, one of the most prominent figures in the development of modern jazz and an innovator 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 trumpeter Jon Faddis, a student of the American master. In 1990, he was part of the United Nations Orchestra, conducted by the North American musician.
In 1981, he founded his own group. He has been invited as a soloist with 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 club in England, and at New Morning in Geneva. As a composer and performer, he has several film soundtracks to his credit, 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 named The Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club, which has since hosted stars of the genre, including Sandoval himself.
Sandoval is highly regarded and influential within the Cuban community in Florida due to his staunch statements against the Cuban government and his support for the recently emerged movements in Cuba that are advocating for change on the island. He joined the 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 nine times and has been nominated 17 times. He has also won 6 Billboard awards and one Emmy.
In 2018, he said in an interview with the Argentine branch of Billboard: "I would like to one day return to a Cuba where human rights are respected, but I don’t think I will see that. I'm no longer 20 years old; I will be 70… I hope that someday 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 man in his twenties completing his three years of compulsory military service, he was imprisoned for listening to jazz on a foreign radio station.
In January 2020, the official Cuban 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.' The event was streamed for free on YouTube and also featured artists Yotuel Romero, Willy Chirino, Gente de Zona, Anamely Ramos, and scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola.
