Michel Camilo is a Dominican pianist and composer who works across jazz, classical and Caribbean music. Born in Santo Domingo on 4 April 1954, he was playing with the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic at sixteen, moved to New York in 1979, and has since won a Grammy, a Latin Grammy and an Emmy. He writes for orchestra as readily as he plays in trio.

Santo Domingo and the Conservatory

Camilo grew up in a musical family. He was given an accordion as a small child, but it was his grandparents’ piano that held him, and at nine he asked for one of his own; his parents sent him first to the Elementary Music School of the National Conservatory and granted the wish a year later. He studied there for thirteen years and was playing with the National Symphony Orchestra at sixteen. He has said he first heard jazz at fourteen and a half, when Art Tatum’s solo reading of "Tea for Two" came over the radio.

When the Harvard University Jazz Band visited the Dominican Republic and heard him at a jam session, its bandleader told him he should be in the United States. He moved to New York in 1979 and studied at Mannes College and the Juilliard School.

New York

His opening came in 1983, when Tito Puente’s pianist could not make a date at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Puente took him on a recommendation, without having heard him play. Paquito D’Rivera was in the audience, offered him a place in his band, and Camilo spent four years touring with him and made two records.

He debuted with his own trio at Carnegie Hall in 1985 and recorded Why Not?, with Guarionex Aquino Hijo on percussion, for the Japanese label Electric Bird. His composition "Why Not!" travelled further than the record: Manhattan Transfer’s vocal version of it won a Grammy in 1993. In November 1988 he made his major-label debut with Michel Camilo on Sony, which held the top of the jazz albums chart for weeks, and On Fire and On the Other Hand followed.

In December 1987 he conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic for the first time, in a programme of Rimsky-Korsakov, Beethoven and Dvořák that also included his own "The Goodwill Games Theme", the piece that won him an Emmy. He was musical director of the Heineken Jazz Festival at home until 1992.

Spain and Live at the Blue Note

In 2000 he recorded Spain with the flamenco guitarist Tomatito, piano and guitar in duo, and it took Best Latin Jazz Album at the first Latin Grammy Awards. The same year Berklee gave him a doctorate in music. Live at the Blue Note, made with Charles Flores and Horacio "El Negro" Hernández, won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2004. He also wrote for film — scores for Emilio Martínez-Lázaro’s Los peores años de nuestra vida and Amo tu cama rica, and for Fernando Trueba’s Two Much — and appeared in Trueba’s documentary Calle 54.

Written for orchestra

The London Philharmonic commissioned Rhapsody for Two Pianos and Orchestra, premiered by Katia and Marielle Labèque at the Royal Festival Hall in 1992. The National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic commissioned his Piano Concerto No. 1 and Tango for Ten Pianos, and the Tenerife Auditorium his Piano Concerto No. 2. He has played the White House, holds an honorary doctorate and the Herb Alpert Visiting Professorship at Berklee, and has scholarships in his name at Berklee and at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Legacy

The Dominican government made him a Knight of the Heraldic Order of Christopher Columbus in 1992 and later awarded him the Silver Cross of the Order of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella. He has recorded and performed with Dominican musicians across the generations, among them Juan Luis Guerra 4.40 and the violinist Aisha Syed Castro. He remains the Dominican musician whose work is most often heard in concert halls rather than dance halls, and the one who moves between the two without changing his playing.