Guarionex Aquino is a Dominican percussionist who works in jazz and in the fusion of jazz with Dominican folk rhythms. He is the son of Guarionex Aquino Reyes, the baritone of the same name, and is distinguished from him by the instrument: the father sang, the son plays.

The rehearsals

He was born in Santa Cruz de Mao, in Valverde, in 1954. He has said that his interest began by watching his father’s rehearsals as a small child, and that the musicians in those orchestras struck him as supernatural. The first instrument he played was the tambora.

The performance he names as the one he remembers above others is early: playing beside his father at the age of nine, with Julio Alberto Hernández at the piano, on a Christmas carol.

Michel Camilo

He calls Michel Camilo the godfather of his career. His first performance outside the country was in Switzerland with Camilo, as part of a Dominican delegation, and he played percussion on the film soundtrack Camilo composed for Two Much, alongside a group of Caribbean and North American players.

The palette

He describes his own approach in visual terms, choosing the instruments he needs to paint the countryside, the green and the folklore he comes from, and he names the tumbadora as the sound that means the Caribbean to him. Asked whether any genre fails to interest him, he has answered that all of them do.

Percutronic

He was honoured at the South Florida Dominican Jazz Festival in 2014, at an edition dedicated to him. He has since worked in Percutronic, a percussion trio, and continues to appear as a sideman, a role he describes as a matter of restraint, colour and dynamics.