Paquito D'Rivera b.4 June 1948, Havana, Cuba

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Fluent in multiple musical languages, electrifying composer and performer Paquito D'Rivera has impacted American music across Latin, Jazz, and Classical genres. Having begun his career as a performer with the National Symphony of Cuba as a teenager, Mr. D'Rivera went on to establish the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna as well as Irakere, whose explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical, and traditional Cuban music proved a ground-breaking addition to the Cuban musical milieu.

With more than 30 recordings to date, Mr. D'Rivera has garnered eight GRAMMY awards, his Merengue for cellist Yo-Yo Ma earning him the GRAMMY for Best Classical Composition (2004). As a clarinetist and saxophonist, Mr. D'Rivera has performed with organizations such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Recognition of his dynamic compositional skills came in 2007 with the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, and the 2007-08 appointment as Composer-In-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts with the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) named Mr. D'Rivera a NEA Jazz Master in 2005, the same year that he received the National Medal for the Arts, presented by the U.S. president at the White House. He has received a Doctorate Honoris Causa in Music from the Berklee School of Music (2003), an Annual Achievement in Music Award for his "outstanding body of work" from The National Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, a Living Jazz Legend Award presented at the Kennedy Center (2007), and has twice been named Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. Proclaimed "the consummate multinational ambassador" by the NEA, Mr. D'Rivera is the only artist to have won Latin GRAMMYs in both Classical and Latin Jazz categories (2003).