Fernando González - Writer

Fernando González moderating a panel with Bebo, Chucho y Leyanis Valdés
at the Festival "Son Latinos"

Fernando González is a contributing editor to Latingrammy.com, the page of The Latin Recording Academy, and The International Review of Music (http://irom.wordpress.com), a music blog. He also writes regularly for The Miami Herald and Jazz Times magazine. In 2011 Gonzalez also co-produced Pablo Aslan’s Piazzolla in Brooklyn (Soundbrush), a recording of jazz tango based on music by Astor Piazzolla, and, in the Spring, was a Guest Lecturer for a course on Multidisciplinary Work he helped develop for the Global Jazz Institute, Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 2010, Gonzalez also produced and hosted “Jazz With an Accent,” a 10-show radio program about global jazz on 88.9 WDNA FM, Miami.

From 2003 to 2008, González was the Managing Editor of JAZZIZ, a jazz monthly. Between 2005 and 2007 he was also the Curator of Jazz Programming for the then-called Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, now the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center, in Miami.

In 2007 he accepted a position with Spain’s Fundación Autor, part of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (General Society of Authors and Publishers or SGAE), to help launch a cultural network development project in Latin America and a new international music school in Valencia, Spain, a collaboration with Berklee College of Music.

Español

In 2008, he also returned to the recording studio to produce Argentine pianist Adrian Iaies’s Vals de la 81st & Columbus, a jazz-tango disc released by Sunnyside, a New York-based label.

His career as a music journalist and critic includes stints as correspondent for The Washington Post (2000-2004), and as staff music critic for The Miami Herald (1993-1999) and The Boston Globe (1988-1993). He has contributed to National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, and several national publications, writing in both English and Spanish, including Down Beat magazine, Sí, Variety, Rhythm Music, LOFT, CD Review, New York Latino, Request, Pulse and eritmo.com. He was also a music consultant for Amazon.com and a visiting scholar in the “Música de las Américas” series, The Smithsonian Associates, Washington, DC.

In 2001, González translated, annotated and expanded Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir (Amadeus Press), the memoirs of the late Argentine New Tango composer, as told to Natalio Gorin.

As a television writer and producer, González won an Emmy and a Gabriel Award for the special “Notes From The Mambo Inn: The Story of Mario Bauzá” (WGBH, Boston, 1991). The following year he was nominated for an Emmy and received a Gold Award from CPB for “En Clave,” (WGBH, Boston, 1992) a special on Latin music hosted by singer Rubén Blades.

Fernando González was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A math major at the University of Buenos Aires, he switched to music and studied privately and at the Municipal Conservatory of Buenos Aires. He moved to the United States in 1977 to attend Berklee College of Music where he majored in Composition/Film Music. While in Boston, González also studied with composer and theoretician George Russell at the New England Conservatory. He also studied composition and guitar with Ralph Towner at Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO.

González plays saxophone and flute and is a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and a charter member of the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.