Aruán Ortiz

Aruán Ortiz website

All Projects with Video and Presentation

• projects as a leader •

Composer and pianist Aruán Ortiz, a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow known for blending Cuban-Haitian and Afro-Caribbean rhythms with contemporary classical and spontaneous composition, presents an exploration of Afro-diasporic identity and oral expression through the lens of post-20th-century genres, like new music, contemporary classical, and avant-garde jazz.
The program features works by James Newton, Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Davis, and Jonathan Bailey Holland.
It also includes the premiere of five scenes from Ortiz's work-in-progress chamber opera Je renais de mes cendres, based on the life of Marie-Louise Christophe, the first and only Queen of Haiti, focusing on the years 1820 to 1824.
The opera reveals her inner world and memories by blending present hardship with past glory, and highlights her essential role in the Haitian Revolution alongside her husband, General Henri Christophe. The score is composed for narrator, voice, clarinet, flute, percussion, piano, viola, and cello.
This ensemble brings together a collective of visionary artists and leading figures in creative music dedicated to improvisation and Afro-diasporic expression. Led by Ortiz, the group pushes the boundaries of musical Afro-diasporic traditions and storytelling.
The music dives across multiple musical contexts, as his continuous research leads him to write for chamber ensembles, orchestras, dance companies, and feature films, incorporating contemporary classical music, Cuban-Haitian and Afro-Caribbean rhythms, spontaneous composition and improvised music in his works.
He has recently received prestigious accolades, including the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship in Music Composition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2025).

Video live at Roulette, Brooklyn on 23-9-2025

Visit flamencocriollo.com for detailed info.
Video of the concert at Flamenco Biënnale on 12-11-2021
Video of the concert at Teatro Valli on 21-9-2024

With Flamenco Criollo, commissioned by the Flamenco Biënnale Nederland in 2021, Cuban composer, pianist and music researcher Aruán Ortiz revives the colors of this powerful world musical language, assembling a unique ensemble to explore the roots of flamenco. Musicians from Morocco, Palestine, Cuba, United States and Spain bring the melancholic sounds of Al-Andaluz and the energetic rhythms of Africa into surprising contemporary compositions.
Flamenco Criollo tells a complex story. It includes Persian music, North African influence in Andalusia, the exchange between the port cities of Cádiz and Havana and West African influence in Cuba. All this taking as its center the so-called cantes de ida y vuelta, "travel songs", which went from Spain to the Americas and viceversa.

"a genius exercise in the exploration of depth and perception that reveals a bright new wrinkle in the relationship between music and mathematics, reimagining Afro-Haitian Gaga rhythms, Afro-Cuban rumba and Yambú into heavily improvised meditations on modernism that recall John Cage and Paul Bley. Stunning."
- Ron Hart, The Observer

"Ortiz in the solo setting is exceptionally intriguing and for all the theory and extended technique in play, the music is superbly listenable and refreshingly original".
- Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz

"a stupendous display of compositional virtuosity (and diverging styles) from a composer-pianist who certainly deserves your attention. Aruán Ortiz may yet develop into one of the most creative and original composers in the world."
- Lynn René Bayley, The Art Music Lounge

"Ortiz convinces as a tough-minded and idiosyncratic conceptualist who knows how to keep you on the edge of the seat."
- John Sharpe, The New York City Jazz Records

***** Downbeat Magazine

****1/2 All About Jazz

**** The Guardian, UK

Pastor's Paradox is a suite for bass clarinet, clarinet, cello, piano and vocals, that narrates the evolution and radicalization of Martin Luther King's political views, the expanding of his awareness of the devastating negative impact of systemic economic inequality and the lack of support for black and brown communities, which he denounced in several speeches during the latest stage of his prolific civil rights activism.
This music expanded my compositional palette when I developed new techniques to conceptualize, analyze, and translate Martin Luther King's speech into a musical composition using his messages and views, rhythms, pitches, patterns, and textures.
It is my hope that the music makes a meaningful connection to audiences and contributes to the legacy of social justice.

Des de la Profunditat is an electro-acoustic duo created by composers and musicians Aruán Ortiz (Cuba) and Joan Arnau Pàmies (Spain), focused on raising awareness of the impact of global warming with an A/V experience (music, light and video) as the central conduit to embark the audience in a unique journey. Through a series of musical reflections around some of the most serious consequences of climate change: sea level rise, floods, droughts, and extreme temperatures, the Ortiz and Pàmies collaboration looks forward to generating an immersive audio-visual experience that explains the need to immediately change the behavior of humans towards the planet and the other species that inhabit it.
Celebrating the legacy of the great Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto duo, this project arises from the electro-acoustic and experimental vocabulary of the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the XXI, with examples such as John Cage, "Drukqs" by Aphex Twin and "Obsolete Systems" by Laurie Spiegel. The album was released on May 2024.
Presentation at Proto Material Records
Video Excerpts - live at L'Intèrpret, Lleida on 17-12-2022

• video •

Aruán Ortiz solo piano "Arabesque of a geometrical rose" - live at Duc des Lombards, Paris 2014

• audio •

Pastor's Paradox (quintet) on BandCamp
Live In Zürich feat. Brad Jones and Chad Taylor on BandCamp
"Hidden Voices" feat. Eric Revis and Gerald Cleaver on BandCamp
"Serranías Sketchbook" feat. Brad Jones and John Betsch on BandCamp
"Inside Rhythmic Falls" feat. Andrew Cyrille and Mauricio Herrera on BandCamp
"Random Dances and (A)tonalities": duo with Don Byron on BandCamp
Cub(an)ism on BandCamp

• short biography •

Pianist, violist, and composer Aruán Ortiz - born in Santiago de Cuba, and resident of Brooklyn - has been an active figure in the progressive jazz and avant-garde scene in the US for more than 15 years.
Since his arrival in the United States, he has played, toured and recorded with jazz luminaries such as Wadada Leo Smith, Don Byron, Greg Osby, Wallace Roney, Nicole Mitchell, Cameron Brown, Michael Formanek, William Parker, Adam Rudolph, Andrew Cyrille, Henry Grimes, Marshall Allen, Hamiet Bluiett, Oliver Lake, Rufus Reid, Graham Haynes, Terri Lyne Carrington and Nasheet Waits. He has also collaborated with choreographers Jose Mateo, Danis Mora, and Milena Zullo; filmmakers Ben Chace, Mariona Lloreta and Monica Rovira; poets Abiodun Oyewole from The Last Poets; writer/poet/filmmaker Mtume Gant; DJ Logic and Val Jeanty Inc. and with renowned German writers Angelika Hentschel and Anna Breitenbach.
Aruán's pianism has been lauded as "a solid and unique new sound in today's jazz world".
He holds an MFA in Music Composition by Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) and has received numerous accolades including South Arts Jazz Road Creative Residency Grant (2021), Jazz Coalition Commission Grant (2020), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2019); the Composer Fellowship Award at Vermont College of Fine Arts (2016); the Doris Duke Impact Awards (2014); the Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant (2013); Latin Jazz Corner's Arranger of the Year (2011) for his contribution on the album "El Cumbanchero" by flutist Mark Weinstein; Jas Hennessy Piano Solo Competition, Montreux, Switzerland (2001); and Best Jazz Interpretation, Festival de Jazz in Vic, Spain (2000).

• quotes •

"one of the most creative and original composers in the world"
- Lynn René Bayley, The Art Music Lounge

"Ortiz is an experimentalist and a tonal provocateur, influenced by European modernism and contemporary jazz as much as by Afro-Cuban tradition"
- Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times

• discography as a leader •

1996 - Aruán Ortiz: "Impression Tropical" (Magic Music / Universal Latino)
2004 - Aruán Ortiz Trio: "Vol I" (Pimienta)
2010 - Aruán Ortiz Quartet: "Alameida" (Fresh Sound / New Talent)
2012 - Aruán Ortiz: "Santiarican Blues Suite" (Sunny Side Communications Inc.)
2012 - Aruán Ortiz Quartet: "Orbiting" (Fresh Sound)
2012 - Bob Gluck and Aruán Ortiz: "Textures and Pulsations" (Ictus)
2013 - Aruán Ortiz and Michael Janisch Quintet: "Banned in London" (Whirlwind)
2016 - Aruán Ortiz Trio with Brad Jones and John Betsch: "Hidden Voices" (Intakt)
2017 - Aruán Ortiz Piano Solo: "Cuban Nocturne" (Newvelle)
2017 - Aruán Ortiz Piano Solo: "Cub(an)ism" (Intakt)
2018 - Aruán Ortiz & Don Byron: "Random Dances and (A)tonalities" (Intakt)
2018 - Aruán Ortiz Trio with Brad Jones and Chad Taylor: "Live in Zurich" (Intakt)
2020 - Aruán Ortiz with Andrew Cyrille and Mauricio Ferrera: "Inside Rhythmic Falls" (Intakt)
2023 - Aruán Ortiz Trio: "Serranías Sketchbook for Piano Trio" (Intakt)
2023 - Aruán Ortiz Quintet: "Pastor's Paradox" (Clean Feed)
2025 - Aruán Ortiz Piano Solo: "Creóle Renaissance" (Intakt)

• links •

"The Sound and the Artist" - an intimate talk with Aruán Ortiz at Montreux Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary
News
Dates
Photos and Videos
Discography
Works and Compositions
Selected Press