“Ortiz is not simply expanding the possibilities of jazz; he is redefining what diasporic music can be in the 21st century.”

- All About Jazz

CRÉOLE RENAISSANCE (INTAKT 2025)

★★★★★
- Morning Star (UK)

★★★★ 1/2
- ALL ABOUT JAZZ (USA)

★★★★
- Downbeat Magazine (Print Edition)

‘The Best Jazz Albums of 2025,’ THE ARTS FUSE

‘Top Jazz Recordings of 2025,’ Sound and the Mainstream

‘20 Melhores Discos Internacionais 2025,’ JAZZ.PT


His own journey having retraced the path of jazz’s evolution from his native Cuba to the United States, pianist and composer Aruán Ortiz has long been fascinated by the ways in which the African diaspora has morphed into fascinating new permutations in its travels across the globe. On his latest album, Créole Renaissance, Ortiz takes Négritude, the cultural, political and literary movement that emerged among French intellectuals in the 1930s, as the leaping off point for a fascinating collection of solo piano explorations.

WHAT THE PRESS SAYS ABOUT CRÉOLE RENAISSANCE

“Créole Renaissance is not just a great solo piano album, it is a test of resistance, a political and poetic act at once. And, above all, it is music that allows no escape: it calls us to a radical, total listening, as few know how today.”
– Off Topic Magazine

“THIS is solo piano at its most intense, inventive and beautiful.” 
- Morning Star Online (UK)

“The music [of Créole Renaissance]... is very "free" and firmly in the vein of avant garde jazz pianist Cecil Taylor or even modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg.
- Outsideleft (USA)

“[Aruán Ortiz] playing on Créole Renaissance is graceful, full of purpose; he comes across as a sculptor, not a painter.”
- JazzTimes (USA)

“[On Cróle Renaissance] His sonic adventures and musical convictions lie far removed from any virtuoso or technical pushing of boundaries. Ortiz is more like an anatomist, a dissecting pianist who takes apart, compares, analyzes, and (perhaps) reassembles the old in a new or different way.”
- Saiten Kult (D)

“Créole Renaissance is a hauntingly beautiful album that, apart from its inspiration…  allowed to ring out until you’re left with nothing but the sound of your own breath listening to this very fine music.”
-Cultural Attache (CA)

“If Cuban jazz piano frequently emphasizes the island’s historical and cultural links to the decorative flourishes of European romanticism, Ortiz is very different: his playing can be spare or dense, but either way, it is intense, percussive and mercurially alert to rhythmic possibility.”
- The New York City Jazz Record (USA)

“[Créole Renaissance] is… a groundbreaking synthesis of Western modernism and Afro-Cuban roots music. …a sombre meditation by a modern master.”
- The Wire Magazine

Pianist, violist, and composer Aruán Ortiz—born in Santiago de Cuba, and resident of Brooklyn—has been an active figure in the progressive jazz and avant-garde scene in the US for more than 15 years.

Since his arrival in the United States, Aruán has played, toured, and recorded with jazz luminaries such as Wadada Leo Smith, Don Byron, Greg Osby, Wallace Roney, Nicole Mitchell, Cameron Brown, Michael Formanek, William Parker, Adam Rudolph, Andrew Cyrille, Henry Grimes, Marshall Allen, Hamiet Bluiett, Oliver Lake, RufusReid, Graham Haynes, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Nasheet Waits. He has also collaborated with choreographers Jose Mateo, Danis Mora, and Milena Zullo; filmmakers Ben Chace, Mariona Lloreta, and Monica Rovira; poets Abiodun Oyewole from The Last Poets; writer/poet/ filmmaker Mtume Gant; DJ Logic and Val Jeanty Inc.; and renowned German writers Angelika Hentschel and Anna Breitenbach.

Aruán’s pianism has been lauded as “a solid and unique new sound in today’s jazz world.” and his albums have been featured in major publications worldwide, including JazznMore Swizerland, The Guardian UK, Expresso, The New York Times, DownBeat, JazzTimes, Jazziz, The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone Magazine, Billboard, San Diego Union Tribune, All About Jazz, US, Jazzpodium, Musica Jazz, Il Muro Magazine, Il Corriere della Sera, Jazz Halo, The Ottawa Citizen, and The Irish Times.

Aruán holds an MFA in Music Composition by Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) and has received numerous accolades including South Arts Jazz Road Creative Residency Grant (2021), Jazz Coalition Commission Grant (2020), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2019); the Composer Fellowship Award at Vermont College of Fine Arts (2016); the Doris Duke Impact Awards (2014); the Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant (2013); Latin Jazz Corner’s Arranger of the Year (2011) for his contribution on the album, “El Cumbanchero” by flutist Mark Weinstein (Jazzheads, 2011); Jas Hennessy Piano Solo Competition, Montreux, Switzerland (2001); and Best Jazz Interpretation, Festival de Jazz in Vic, Spain (2000).