Ángel Fernández is a Dominican trumpeter, arranger, producer and musical director. He was born in Santiago de los Caballeros and raised in New York, and he has led Marc Anthony’s orchestra for years.

The Manhattan School of Music

He took both his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees in music at the Manhattan School of Music. That is a conservatory education of a kind very few people in Latin popular music have, and it is the reason he ended up writing the charts rather than only playing them.

As a trumpet player he has been through the bands that matter in this music, among them Ray Barretto’s and Cheo Feliciano’s.

Running the band

A musical director is the least visible important job in a touring act. He decides how the arrangements sit, who plays what, how the show is paced and how it holds together night after night — and the audience credits the singer.

Marc Anthony has had Dominicans around him for a long time. Michel el Buenón wrote Hasta Ayer, which Anthony made a standard; Fernández runs the orchestra. Neither fact is well known at home.

La Misma Canción

In the middle of 2026 he released La Misma Canción, Vol. I under his own name, and brought it to the Dominican Republic in August. He framed it explicitly as a celebration of his Dominican roots — an arranger who has spent a career serving other people’s records making one that is his.

The Dominican press covered the launch across Listín Diario, Diario Libre and Hoy. Junior Cabrera recorded a long interview with him, and his advice to Dominican salseros in it was characteristic of an arranger: worry less about speed.