|
 |
|
ARUAN ORTIZ
Genre: Jazz, Latin, World Music
Website:
//www.aruanortiz.com
Contact:
naurazitro@hotmail.com
This artist currently has no songs to listen to. |
|
|
MORE ABOUT ARUAN ORTIZ
"Aruán Ortiz is the latest Cuban wunderkind to arrive in the United States." - BETJazz.com
"...original music that revealed an impressive approach to improvising and composing...giving positive meaning to the term intelligent design."- All About Jazz.
A former classically trained violist and pianist, Arua´n Ortiz was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1973, and began
his studies at the age of 8 at the Escuela Vocacional de Arte in his home town. Continuing at the Instituto
Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, he was marked by the influence of Bach, Mozart, Paganini and Liszt,
among others. After receiving various awards as a violist — Amadeo Rolda´n award for Best Mozart
Interpretation, 1991, Best Interpretation of Cuban Music, 1991 — and playing as a soloist with the Santiago
Symphony Orchestra in 1992, he gave up the viola at the age of 20 in favor of the piano, an instrument he
had always preferred, and with which he most identified in his search for new sounds.
Influenced by jazz greats such as Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Thelonious Monk, and mentored by Horacio
Fumero (former bass player in the Tete Montoliu´ Trio), Arua´n’s jazz career took off as a sideman in
Barcelona and Paris, playing with Antoine Roney, Sarah Morrow, Tata Gu¨ines, Miguel “Anga´” Di´az, and in
the U.S. with Wallace Roney, Roy Hargrove, Stefon Harris, George Garzone, Sheila E., Horacio “El negro”
Herna´ndez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Lionel Lueke, Eric McPherson, Abraham Burton, Jane Bunnett, Jerry
Bergonzi, Hal Crook, and John Lockwood among others. While in Europe he was the recipient of various
awards including Best Jazz Interpretation, Festival de Jazz in Vic, Spain (2000) and Semifinalist, Jas Hennessy
Piano Solo Competition, Montreux, Switzerland (2001). Later, in the U.S., Arua´n participated in the
recording of the definitive Miles Davis tribute record on Columbia Records with Davis’ nephew Vince
Wilburn, Wallace Roney, Antoine Roney, Missy Elliot, and others in 2004. He has also collaborated on the
following recordings: Esperanza Spalding, “Junjo,” Ayva Mu´sica, 2005; Arturo Stable, “Notes on Canvas,”
Origen Records, 2005; Chie Imaizumi Big Band, “Change of a better,” 2005. Aside from his trio, Arua´n also
works as an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music, and gives workshops and clinics at different
universities around the U.S.
|
|
|
|
|
