Franklin Rivers (Frank Vásquez Gómez) is a Dominican singer, trombonist and musical director from Cristo Rey, Santo Domingo, raised in New York. He is a founding figure of The New York Band — its voice, its "golden trombone" and its musical director — and one half of the duo Iris y Franklyn. Unusually for a merengue frontman, he built a second full career in American public-school music education without ever putting the trombone down.

Career

Trained in New York at Jazz Mobile and in the Fania All Stars' orbit, he worked the salsa circuit first — Charanga Novedades, Zarabanda, the Orquesta del Judío Maravilloso, Larry Harlow and Luis "Perico" Ortiz, and sessions alongside Tito Nieves and José Alberto "El Canario". In 1986 he became a founding member of The New York Band, singing leads such as «Colé» (his duet with Irisneyda Santos), «San Zarabanda» and «Tarzan Boy» while directing the band's music. The 1988 legal fight between Chery Jiménez and Karen Records' Bienvenido Rodríguez forced his resignation; Rodríguez's answer was the duo Iris y Franklyn, whose two albums (1990, 1992) he fronted with Santos. When the duo ended in 1994 he turned to education — a master's in music education at Lehman College (1994–96), and from 2001 the director of music for the East Ramapo school district, with a second master's in administration. Since the band's reunion era he is again The New York Band's musical director, fronting its return to Dominican stages in December 2025.

Legacy

Franklin Rivers is the through-line of The New York Band: the trombone and the direction at its founding, one half of the duo its first rupture produced, and the musical director of its second life forty years on. His story joins two worlds that rarely meet in one biography — the Karen Records merengue machine and the American school-band classroom.