Festival Home | Festival Info | Registration &
Director Info
| Guest Artists | Clinicians | Sponsorship | Contact Us
Festival Clinicians

Tito Carrillo

Assistant Professor of Jazz Trumpet at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Tito Carrillo joined the Illinois faculty in the Spring of 2006. He is a trumpeter, educator, bandleader, composer, and arranger, and since 1996 he has been a fixture in the Chicago jazz and Latin music scenes. The list of artists he has performed, recorded, and toured with is as varied as his skill set: Chicago heavyweights Willie Pickens, Bobby Broom, Patricia Barber, and Kurt Elling; big bands such as the Woody Herman Orchestra, Chicago Jazz Ensemble, Chicago Jazz Orchestra, and Smithsonian Masterworks Orchestra (directed by David Baker); jazz greats such as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Louis Hayes, Jon Faddis, and Vincent Herring; Salsa legends such as Andy MontaƱez, Tony Vega, and Cheo Feliciano; Latin jazz giants Tito Puente and Paquito D’Rivera; and pop icons Quincy Jones and Phil Collins. Carrillo has played some of the most prestigious venues in the world, including Chicago’s Symphony Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and London’s Royal Albert Hall.

His work has been heard at international jazz festivals in Chicago, Telluride, Montreux (Switzerland), North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague (Netherlands), and Pori, Finland. As an educator, he served on the faculties at both the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, as well as Northwestern University prior to his appointment at Illinois. He has also brought his talents as an educator and performer to Chicago’s inner-city high schools through the Ravinia Festival’s community outreach program, the Ravinia Jazz Mentors. Of Carrillo, the Chicago Tribune states “he has acquired a reputation as a fluid improviser, doubly-blessed with a warm lyric style and technique to burn.” He continues to lead his own quintet in Chicago and throughout the Midwest, as well as being an active guest soloist and clinician at various secondary and collegiate jazz programs.

< Back to Festival Clinicians Page