Primary Instrument: Piano
Andrés Ortiz Villalba is born in Bogotà, Colombia, in 1978. At a very young age he approaches folkloric music through learning to play the organ. He pursues his tudies on the piano, at first privately with Maestro Betancourt, later through professional studies at the Universidad El Bosque of Bogotà. In 2001 he resettles to Barcelona, Spain, in order to specialise in jazz performance at the Aula del Conservatori del Liceu, affiliated to the Berklee College of Music, Boston. He participates in various composition and improvisation workshops held by Bebo Valdés, Chick Corea and Bobby Mc Ferrin. The time spent in Spain allows him to experiment in composition in numerous musical genres, achieving original compoositions for theatre and bands. He performs in all best- known clubs (Jamboree Jazz Club, Bel-Luna Jazz Club, Cova del Drac, Sidecar, etc.) and is featured by the Festival de la Mercé, Festival de Jazz de Barcelona, Festival de musicas del mundo de Vic. He collaborates closely with diverse theatre companies, as well as with the famed Catalan stage director Manel Barceló, for whom he composes original music and performs at renown festivals such as the Festival del Grec 2003 with the play Animalmusic. Working as composer, arranger and keyboardist of the latin band Raspa, he wins the 2007 Diversons competition of the Obra Social Fundación La Caixa, holding a tour all over Spain and Portugal. The same year his composition “Cabeza de ratón” for the rock band La Fe wins the prize for best soundtrack at the Festival de Ovalle, Chile, where it is featured in director Klich Lopez’s short film Collar de Perlas. Next to his activity as pianist and composer he founds and directs various festivals, such as the Street Artist Festival in various communities of the province of Barcelona, during five consecutive years. In 2008 he moves to Switzerland, founding and running the Smac, Scuola di Musica e Arti Creative (School of Music and Creative Arts), where he also teaches.
Over the past few years he has been developing his personal musical project, exploring the composition of music in the jazz idiom, coupled with traditional Colombian and South American rhythms, thus achieveing the repertoire of the Andrés Ortiz Trio, founded in 2009 together with the two musicians Rino Rossi, double bass, and Brian Quinn, drums. Actually playing with Antonio Cervellino on double bass.
