Gonzalo Rubalcaba Trio ft Eric Harland & Ricky Rodriguez

In 1999, the multi-Grammy® Winner, pianist, and composer GONZALO RUBALCABA was selected by Piano & Keyboard Magazine as one of the great pianists of the 20th century, alongside figures such as Glenn Gould, Martha Argerich and Bill Evans. He has won three Grammys® and Four Latin Grammys, 21 Grammys nominations, he has been awarded the EMPIK Bestsellers prizes, “Palmarés”, awarded by the prestigious institution “Grand Prix De L’ACADEMIE DU JAZZ” and a “Les Victoires du Jazz”, all of which has established him as a creative force in the jazz world. In 2008 he was awarded the ASCAP Foundation “VANGUARD AWARD” for his work as a Composer and Pianist whose innovative and distinctive music is charting new directions in Jazz.

Gonzalo was born on May 27, 1963, into a musical family in Havana. His father, pianist, composer, and bandleader Guillermo Rubalcaba had also played in the orchestra of Enrique Jorrín, the creator of cha-cha-cha; his grandfather Jacobo Rubalcaba, was the composer of classic danzones, and his two brothers were also musicians. Gonzalo, a child prodigy who by the age of 6 was playing drums in his father’s orchestra, started his formal training two years later. He chose the piano as his main instrument to, as he once recalled, “just to please my mother.” He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Havana with a degree in composition and by his mid- teens he was working as both drummer and pianist in the hotels, concert halls and jazz clubs of Havana. Following graduation, he stepped right into the life of the popular musician, touring Cuba, Europe, Africa and Asia with the fabled Orquesta Aragón and as a sideman in jazz groups and, beginning in 1984, leading his own Afro-Cuban jazz rock fusion band, “Grupo Proyecto.”