Carlos Henriquez

Carlos Henriquez has held the bass chair of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis since 1998, the year he also joined the Wynton Marsalis Septet, becoming the ensemble anchor across decades of touring and more than two dozen recordings. Born in 1979 in the Bronx, he came up through Juilliard Music Advancement Program and LaGuardia High School before taking that chair as a teenager. His playing threads Afro-Cuban and Nuyorican rhythms through the swing tradition, an identity heard on leader dates including The Bronx Pyramid (2015) and the Grammy-nominated The South Bronx Story (2021). In 2010 he served as music director of the orchestra cultural exchange with the Cuban Institute of Music alongside Chucho Valdes, and he has performed with Tito Puente, Paco de Lucia, and the Marsalis family. He has taught on the music faculty of Northwestern University since 2008.