Arturo O'Farrill

Arturo O'Farrill leads the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra from his New York base while working as a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. The offspring of big-band director Chico O'Farrill, he performed earlier with the Carla Bley Band, Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, and Lester Bowie, then assumed leadership of the Chico O'Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra. His ensemble delivered the Grammy-winning Song for Chico in 2008; Final Night at Birdland from 2014 and The Offense of the Drum from 2015 each secured Grammys as well. Cuba: The Conversation Continues, captured in Havana in 2015, earned a Grammy nomination. The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra next issued Fandango at the Wall in 2018, Four Questions in 2020, and Dreaming in Lions in 2021, all on Blue Note. O'Farrill unveiled The Centennial Suites in 2022 and, the following year, turned to an atypical piano-trio-and-solo format for Legacies, marking his first solo project on Blue Note.

Born in Mexico City in 1960, O'Farrill grew up in New York City. Son of the Cuban big-band director Chico O'Farrill, he studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Brooklyn College Conservatory. Between 1979 and 1984 he served as pianist in the Carla Bley Big Band, after which he broadened his solo experience alongside Wynton Marsalis, Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Papo Vazquez, the Fort Apache Band, Lester Bowie, and Harry Belafonte.

In 1995 he accepted the post of director for Chico O'Farrill's Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra during its residency at Birdland in New York City, a role that also took the group across international stages. He appeared as featured soloist at three notable Jazz at the Lincoln Center events: Afro-Cuban Jazz: Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra in November 1995, Con Alma: The Latin Tinge in Big Band Jazz in September 1998, and Jazz at the Lincoln Center Gala: The Spirit of Tito Puente in November 2001, mere months after his father's passing.

Recording under his own name, O'Farrill released material on Milestone Records, 32 Jazz, and M & I; Blood Lines from 1999 and A Night in Tunisia from 2000 offered listeners a window into the musical surroundings of his upbringing. The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra under his direction put out the Grammy-nominated Una Noche Inolvidable in 2005. He also contributed to Alberto Shiroma's Habanera and to the soundtrack of the widely praised film Calle 54.

In 2008 he collaborated with vocalist Claudia Acuña on In These Shoes, a collection spanning jazz, Latin, and Brazilian idioms. Two years afterward came The Auction Project with David Bixler, an acoustic post-bop session carrying Celtic inflections. February 2011 brought 40 Acres and a Burro for the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, followed later that year by the solo-piano set The Noguchi Sessions, captured after hours at the Noguchi Museum on Long Island.

O'Farrill produced Adam Kromelow's Youngblood and joined the quartet the Puppeteers alongside Jaime Affoumado, Bill Ware, and Alex Blake; their self-titled album appeared in March 2014. May of the same year saw the release of both The Offense of the Drum and Final Night at Birdland by the Afro-Latin Orchestra, each earning a Grammy the next year in separate categories.

December 2014 found O'Farrill and the ensemble in Cuba for performances and recording preparations. The subsequent evening President Barack Obama declared the renewal of full diplomatic ties with the country after more than five decades. The planned album aligned with that development, extending the musical and cultural dialogue initiated by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo in the 1940s and incorporating four leading Cuban and six American composers and arrangers. The large ensemble expanded to twenty-four musicians, with sessions involving twenty-one producers and videographers from both nations; Motema issued the resulting double-length Cuba: The Conversation Continues in mid-2015.

Two years later O'Farrill joined Chucho Valdés for Familia: Tribute to Bebo & Chico, honoring their renowned fathers and shared musical heritage. In 2018 the orchestra composed and recorded the score for Kabir Sehgal's book Fandango at the Wall: Creating Harmony Between the United States and Mexico, issuing the music as a standalone album and supporting an HBO documentary. Four Questions followed in 2020 and received a Grammy.

While the COVID-19 pandemic continued in 2020, O'Farrill and the orchestra grew impatient with restrictions. He created ten new pieces, prepared charts, made demos, and sent them to bandmates, who rehearsed via video link from their separate homes. Recording proceeded similarly, yielding Virtual Birdland, released by Zoho in February 2021.

That same year he placed the orchestra on Blue Note and promptly returned to the studio with a tentet presented as the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble. Dreaming in Lions appeared that September. Drawing its title from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, a childhood favorite, the recording comprises two multi-movement suites— the second titled "Despedida"— developed with Cuba's Malpaso Dance Company.

Zoho brought out Centennial Suites in June 2022, drawn from archival tapes and containing the four-movement "Afro Latin Jazz Suite" recorded in a Havana studio in December 2014 together with the original version of "Four Questions," begun in a New York studio in 2018 and finished in 2021. September saw the release of Fandango at the Wall in New York on Zoho, closing the project; much of the set was captured live before an audience of five thousand.

Alongside the orchestra's Blue Note contract, O'Farrill signed a solo agreement. April 2023 brought Legacies, a nine-track collection of eight jazz standards by Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, and Carla Bley plus the original "Blue State Blues." The sequence alternates trio performances featuring bassist Liany Mateo and drummer Zack O'Farrill with solo interludes.