Arturo O'Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble

At the center of a jazz dynasty that encompasses Havana, New York, Mexico City and borderlands physical and metaphorical, GRAMMY Award-winning piano virtuoso, composer and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill proudly carriers the 21st century’s Latin jazz flame in his fingers. He leads his dynamic eight-piece Latin Jazz Ensemble for this SFJAZZ debut.

The son of Latin jazz arranger and bandleader Chico O'Farrill and father of trumpeter Adam and drummer Zachary O’Farrill, Arturo honed a vibrant Pan-American approach with his GRAMMY-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. 

He built his sterling reputation on the international jazz scene through this work with Carla Bley, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, and Jerry and Andy Gonzalez’s Fort Apache Band, and worked widely with his father in addition to stellar work as a bandleader that has yielded nearly 20 acclaimed recordings.

He’s also thrived as a composer with high-profile commissions like his vibrant score for the world premiere of Arielle Smith's acclaimed 2024 San Francisco Ballet production of Carmen.  

O'Farrill's latest album, Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley, includes Bley’s last recorded work, 2018’s “Blue Palestine.” It was Bley who discovered O’Farrill as a 19-year-old pianist and hired him for her big band from 1979-83, an experience that set him on an adventurous path defining the progressive edge of Latin jazz for the past three decades.