Bio:
Aruán Ortiz is an acclaimed Cuban pianist, award-winning composer, and a producer and educator.
Called “the latest Cuban wunderkind to arrive in the United States” by BET Jazz, this classically trained violinist and pianist from Santiago de Cuba considers himself “a curious person who loves music” and portrays his music as an architectural structure of sounds incorporating contemporary classical music, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and improvisation as primary material for his compositions.
Aruan has received a number of awards including the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award (2014), Artist-in-Residence at Pocantico Center at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (2014), Latin Jazz Corner’s Arranger of the Year (2011) for his contribution on the album, “El Cumbanchero” (Jazzheads) by flutist Mark Weinstein, semifinalist, Jas Hennessy Piano Solo Competition, Montreux, Switzerland (2001), and Best Jazz Interpretation, Festival de Jazz in Vic, Spain (2000).
Since arriving in New York in 2008 to play with the Wallace Roney Quintet, Aruán has made five recordings, all very well received by the critics. Alameda (Fresh Sound, 2010), received four stars in Jazzwise magazine (U.K.), and was reviewed as "a sophisticated outing of modern jazz." This album was also named one of the top jazz CDs of the year in 2010 by numerous jazz magazines and blogs around the world.
Two thousand twelve was a very intense musical year, as Mr. Ortiz released three albums as a leader: the modern jazz effort, Orbiting (Fresh Sound 2012), was featured in Jazzman and Jazznews Magazine, received four stars from Jazzwise Magazine and Jazz Journal in the UK, and was one of the top ten contemporary jazz albums of 2012 according to "Something Else!" webzine; Santiarican Blues Suite (Sunnyside 2012), received four and a half stars from Downbeat Magazine, and was featured on major jazz blogs and magazines worldwide. Bill Milkowski from JazzTimes Magazine recently proclaimed, "These two simultaneous releases herald the arrival of a major new talent."
On his CD, Banned in London (Whirlwind Recordings 2012, released in 2013 in the U.S.), Aruán co-led a Cuban/US collaboration, a powerful quintet, with bassist/composer Michael Janisch featuring saxophonist Greg Osby and Rudy Royston on drums. Their CD was selected one of the best albums of the year (2013) by Downbeat Magazine, and received five stars on BBC Jazz Radio, and four stars in the Jazz Journal, Jazzwise Magazine, Financial Times, and The Guardian in the UK, where it was also on the list of best jazz albums of 2012.
As a composer, Ortiz has received commissions from the Woodwind Quintet Ensemble of Santiago de Cuba; Música de Camara Orchestra in New York City; Oyú Oró Folkloric Dance Company in New York City; YOUME & Milena Zullo Ballet in Rome; José Mateo Ballet Theater in Cambridge, MA; and University of Albany Symphony Orchestra in New York. In late 2013 and early 2014, he composed and directed the score for the upcoming feature film, 'Sin Alas,' to be released in fall 2014.
Ortiz has also played, toured or recorded with Esperanza Spalding, Joe Lovano, Terri Lyne Carrington, Andrew Cyrille, Oliver Lake, Rufus Reid, Henry Grimes, Cindy Blackman-Santana, Don Byron, Lenny White, Greg Osby, and Wallace Roney, among others.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).