Bobby Sanabria is a eight-time Grammy nominated bandleader, drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, educator, documentary film producer, multicultural warrior, activist, and Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center. His diverse recording and performing experience includes work with such legendary figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Paquito D’Rivera, Charles McPherson, Mongo Santamaría, Ray Barretto, Marco Rizo, Arturo Sandoval, Roswell Rudd, Chico O’Farrill, Candido, Yomo Toro, Francisco Aguabella, Larry Harlow, Henry Thread-gill, and the godfather of Afro-Cuban Jazz, Mario Bauzá. He is a noted educator and clinician, and is on the faculty of the Jazz Department at NYU and the New School Jazz & Contemporary Music where he directs both schools’ acclaimed Afro-Cuban jazz orchestras.

The son of Puerto Rican parents, Bobby was born and raised in New York City’s South Bronx and attended Boston’s Berklee College of Music from 1975 to 1979. Since his graduation, he has become a leader in the Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and jazz fields as both a drummer and percussionist, and is recognized as one of the most articulate musician-scholars of la tradición living today.

Mr. Sanabria was the drummer with the legendary “Father of the Afro-Cuban Jazz movement,” Mario Bauzá’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, where he recorded three CDs (two of which were Grammy-nominated) which are considered to be definitive works of the Afro-Cuban big-band jazz tradition.