Arturo Sandoval Announces Concert in Santiago de Chile

May 24, 2022

Arturo Sandoval (72) is synonymous with class, virtuosity, skill as a trumpeter, and an institution of Latin American music like Irakere. His work is a musical journey where different languages shake together, from jazz to the Afro-Cuban songbook, always standing out with a precise and detailed identity.

An imprint that has already made its landing on the Chilean calendar: the musician will perform on Tuesday, August 9, at 8:30 p.m., at the Nescafé de las Artes theater.

Sandoval began to deepen his study of the trumpet at a very early age, forming his first group—the fundamental Irakere—alongside saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and pianist Chucho Valdés shortly after completing his military service. With this group, they not only accumulated great fame on the island, but also became a sensation in the United States.

They accumulated awards and even at one point became musical allies of Silvio Rodríguez.

Later he would become one of the most accomplished students of the legendary Dizzy Gillespie, from whom he learned the origins and emotions that emanate from jazz, especially bebop, where the American was one of its founders and greatest exponents. He passed this on to Sandoval to make him a world figure of that jazz subgenre, a position he has maintained for decades.

Within a long list of albums released by the artist, in addition to more than a dozen participations in recordings by other musicians, Ultimate Duets! stands out. In this work, Sandoval performs duets alongside a wide variety of artists such as Prince Royce, Alejandro Sanz, Plácido Domingo, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Ariana Grande, and Juan Luis Guerra.

But Sandoval's versatility takes him much further, developing a parallel career linked to classical music. There, the musician has taken his gift with the trumpet to interpret pieces by Hummel and Mozart, with which he has filled multitudes of halls around the world.

Winner of 10 Grammy Awards, 6 Billboard Awards, an Emmy, and even a Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Barack Obama, these are some of the honors that Sandoval has received, positioning himself as one of the living legends of jazz and bebop.