Annual Benefit Gala

Arturo O’Farrill is a multi-time GRAMMY award-winning pianist, composer, and educator born in Mexico and who grew up in New York City. Arturo is Professor in Global Jazz Studies and Assistant Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at UCLA, a Steinway Artist, a Blue Note Records Recording Artist, and was Artist in Residence for The Green Space in NYC for which he created a four-concert series titled “Radical Acts and Musical Deviancy.” His career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.

In 2007, Arturo founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin Music. In 2010, Arturo traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland, and continues to regularly travel to Cuba as an informal Cultural Ambassador.

Arturo has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony Space, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Young People’s Chorus of New York, Columbia University, and the New York State Council on the Arts. An avid supporter of all the Arts, he has performed with Ballet Hispanico and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written three ballets. In addition, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company has in its repertoire a ballet entitled “Open Door” set to several of Arturo’s compositions and recordings.

In 2020, Arturo’s weekly concerts with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, dubbed “Virtual Birdland,” topped the list of 10 Best Quarantine Concerts in the New York Times.