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Puerto Rican drummer Fernando Garcia is part of a young vanguard of musicians who are celebrating the island’s folk traditions by studying it faithfully, reproducing it, then combining it with jazz in a sound that sounds familiar yet so-very-new.

Born in San Juan and raised in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, García studied guitar at the extension program of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico and drumset at Micheo Music Academy (Santurce), while later receiving a bachelor’s degree in música popular from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, graduating in May 2011. Furthermore, he was awarded the Juan Luis Guerra Scholarship to complete a master’s degree in contemporary performance at Berklee College of Music, Valencia, Spain, graduating in July 2013). In May 2018, García completed a second master’s degree in music education at the Teachers College of Columbia University.

In New York City, he has established himself as a drummer, percussionist, composer and educator. Throughout his career, he has worked equally as a band leader as well as a sideman. Some of the musicians García has toured and/or recorded with include Abraham Laboriel, Perico Sambeat, Ricardo Pons, Héctor Matos, Pepe Rivero, Alain Pérez, Guillermo Klein, Julio Montalvo, Victor Mendoza, John Benitez, Ximo Tébar, Nathaniel Townsley, Jim Ridl, Boris Koslov, and Miguel Zenón, among others.