ABOUT TÚPAC

Túpac Mantilla holds degrees in classical, world and Indian percussion studies from Javeriana University (Bogotá, Colombia), the New England Conservatory (Boston, U.S.A.) and Harvard University (Cambridge, U.S.A.). His performance activity includes regular appearances at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Kennedy Center, as well as festivals such as Montreux, Newport and North Sea Jazz, and collaborations with artists like Bobby McFerrin, Esperanza Spalding, Zakir Hussain, and Julian Lage, with whom he was nominated for a Grammy in 2009 for best contemporary Jazz Album.

​

He regularly teaches and gives lectures and residencies at educational institutions such as Stanford University, New York University, Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. In 2012 he founded PERCUACTION , an organization that develops and runs rhythm oriented artistic and social programs around the world, through an innovative rhythm curriculum, which in 2020 surpassed a teaching coverage in Colombia of 200.000 children. He is the founder of the Youth Education Program at the Panama Jazz Festival and the director of the World Rhythm Program at the Stanford Jazz Workshop since 2016. In 2020 he joined the Faculty at the Summer Educators Program at Carnegie Hall in New York City, recognition that goes along with nominations as a 'Rising Percussion Star' by Downbeat Magazine in recent years. ​