Raymond Torres-Santos has been hailed as the most versatile Puerto Rican composer of the 21st century (Malena Kuss’s “Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History)” He has a multifaceted career as a composer, conductor, arranger, pianist, producer, educator, and author. He is equally comfortable in classical, jazz and popular music, and his works span various genres, including orchestral, electronic, and vocal music. He has composed music for the concert hall, ballet, film, theater, television, and radio.
Although Torres-Santos has been known as a classical and film composer, jazz has always been his passion. As a jazz pianist he has played with Maynard Ferguson, Freddy Hubbard, Bobby Shew, Buddy Collette, Ry Cooder and Tito Puente; and as an arranger/director he has worked with Dianne Shuur, Frank Sinatra, Andrea Bocelli, Placido Domingo, Juan Luis Guerra and Vikki Carr, among others.He was the founder of the jazz program at California State University, San Bernardino and was instrumental in bringing the Berklee in Puerto Rico program, when serving as the Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory. He is currently a professor of music composition at the California State University, Long Beach, where he was the Dean of the College of the Arts.
His jazz music showcases the musical richness of Puerto Rican music (aguinaldo, mapeyé, danza, mazurka, bomba, salsa, bolero), the Caribbean world (merengue, reggae, calypso, soca, songo) and South America (samba). The Nuevo Dia Newspaper in San Juan stated that, “he gives life to a new wave of Puerto Rican music: jazz-aguinaldo.”