Music

During a great part of my life I’ve been fortunate to combine an academic career as a linguistics professor with what I enjoy doing most: playing jazz music with people I admire and whose company I enjoy.

I grew up in Burgos (a small provincial town in northern Spain), in a family with no musical background, and in a city where jazz practically did not exist. I began to teach myself to play the guitar at the age of 15, and coming across a radio program in a local station I immediately became interested in jazz. I then took up the bass, and within a few years, I earned a reputation as a dependable rhythm section player, winning first prize at the Jazz Competition for Young Performers from Castilla y León and being a finalist in the Spanish Final. In the early 1990s I moved to the United States to experience the “real thing”.

My intention was to spend a year in the US to learn English and play some music… but I stayed thirteen years and came back with a doctorate in linguistics and a family. My American adventure includes a decade in Los Angeles where I studied with John Clayton. There I co-founded the Sunset Trio with which we won first prize in the 10th John Coltrane Festival competition for young artists. I have been blessed to collaborate with and learn from artists such as Jeff Clayton, Ronald Muldrow, Dale Fielder, Spanky Wilson, John Chin, Yosvany Terry, Manfred Kullmann and Iñaki Askunze, among many others, and I have performed in jazz clubs, television shows and festivals in the United States, Europe and Asia.

You can check out some of muy musical projects on my YouTube channel

Also get my latest CD here

Mi first album as a leader, Professor Midnight, is a summation of the many musical (and also non-musical) experiences that I have lived in almost four decades of playing jazz music: from listening to the first records and teaching myself to play the bass growing up in Burgos (Spain), to the many sideman collaborations in the jazz scene of the places where my education and academic career has taken me: Los Angeles, Seoul, New York, Boston, Majorca and elsewhere.

You can listen to the album on your favorite streaming platform here, or purchase a copy of the physical CD here. I hope you enjoy this music as much as I did completing this project