Ricky Castillo playing electric guitar in a black-and-white portrait

Cuban-born guitarist · composer

About Ricky
Castillo.

From Havana to New York and South Florida, follow the places, studies, and collaborations that shaped Ricky’s voice on the guitar.

Read the story

Havana · New York · Boca Raton

A personal language

Tradition gives the music its roots.
Improvisation lets it travel.

Ricky Castillo is a Cuban-born jazz guitarist and composer based in Boca Raton, Florida. His music brings Cuban tradition into conversation with jazz harmony and contemporary Latin forms, with the guitar at the center of a sound that is rhythmic, melodic, and open to discovery.

Explore the music

The places that shaped the sound

A life in three movements.

Havana

Raised in Havana, Ricky grew up close to Cuban popular and folkloric music. Its rhythms and melodies remain part of his musical vocabulary, carried into original compositions, son cubano, boleros, and Latin jazz.

New York

Fourteen years of professional performance in New York City brought Ricky into the city's jazz and Latin music community. During his musical development, he studied jazz guitar with Pat Martino, deepening his engagement with the instrument and the language of jazz.

South Florida

Now based in Boca Raton, Ricky brings those experiences into a continuing practice of performing, recording, and composing. The music connects the memory of home with the possibilities of the present.

Ricky Castillo and vocalist Mayda Cuellar together in New York City — New York City · Ricky Castillo and Mayda Cuellar

Musical collaboration

A shared connection to Havana.

Vocalist Mayda Cuellar is a close collaborator and featured voice in Ricky’s musical world. A graduate of Havana’s National School of Arts, she brings her own depth of Cuban musical experience to their work together.

Their collaboration draws on Havana’s cultural heritage, the music they encountered in New York, and the creative life they continue to build in South Florida.

Hear the recordings

Continue listening

Let the music
tell the rest.

Explore selected releases or get in touch about concerts, festivals, and collaborations.

Explore the music Booking inquiries

About RickyCastillo.

Tradition gives the music its roots.Improvisation lets it travel.