Sandy Gabriel — Sandy Antonio Gabriel Difó, born 10 May 1972 in Nagua — is a Dominican saxophonist, composer and arranger who built the country’s clearest bridge between jazz and merengue from a base on the north coast.

The Combo Candela

He moved to Puerto Plata at nine; his interest in the saxophone came from his father, Sócrates Gabriel, who led the popular 1960s and ’70s group «Combo Candela». Sandy’s own early work was in jazz combos at Puerto Plata’s tourist hotels, where he began fusing jazz language with Dominican merengue.

From Puerto Plata to the world

He went on to play the Puerto Plata Jazz Festival and Puerto Rico’s Heineken Jazz Festival, sharing stages there with Néstor Torres, Tito Puente, Sérgio Mendes, Spyro Gyra, Paquito D’Rivera, Chucho Valdés, Dave Grusin, Lee Ritenour, Arturo Sandoval and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and carried his own «PP Jazz Ensemble» to the Ramajay Jazz Festival in Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba’s Jazz Plaza, the Bahamas Jazz Festival and the Montreal Jazz Festival. In the Dominican Republic he has recorded and performed with Juan Luis Guerra 4.40, Michel Camilo, Víctor Víctor, Juan Francisco Ordóñez, Chichi Peralta and the percussionist Guarionex Aquino Hijo, with whom he has repeatedly shared a bill.

Awards, and the Teatro Nacional

He won the 2003 Premio Nacional de Música in jazz and the 2012 Premios Casandra for Concierto del Año, and was the first Dominican jazz musician to bring an original show of his own to the Teatro Nacional. He has also taught saxophone, giving masterclasses for three straight years at the University of North Carolina and running clinics at Troy University in Alabama.

Legacy

Two decades after leaving hotel lounges in Puerto Plata for international stages, Gabriel remains the Dominican north’s clearest jazz voice, still touring under the PP Jazz Ensemble name that carries his adopted city’s initials.