Arturo Sandoval (born November 6, 1949) is a Cuban-American jazz trumpeter, pianist and composer.

Sandoval, while living in his native Cuba, was influenced by jazz musicians Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, and Dizzy Gillespie, finally meeting Gillespie later in 1977. Gillespie became a mentor and colleague, playing with Sandoval in concerts in Europe and Cuba and later featuring him in the United Nations Orchestra. Sandoval defected while touring with Gillespie in 1990, and he became an American naturalized citizen in 1998.

His life was the subject of the film For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000), starring Andy García. Sandoval has won ten Grammy Awards and been nominated nineteen times; he has also received six Billboard Awards and one Emmy Award. Additionally, Sandoval has performed in a Super Bowl Halftime Show (1995), in an Orange Bowl (2009)^[2] at the White House, and at the University of Notre Dame.

On August 8, 2013, President Barack Obama announced that Sandoval would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sandoval was born in Artemisa. As a twelve-year-old boy in Cuba, Sandoval played trumpet with street musicians. He helped establish the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, which became the band Irakere in 1973. He toured worldwide with his own group in 1981. The following year he toured with Dizzy Gillespie, who became his friend and mentor. From 1982 to 1984, Sandoval was voted as Cuba’s Best Instrumentalist and was a guest artist at the BBC and Leningrad Symphony Orchestras. In 1989, Gillespie invited Sandoval to be part of the United Nations Orchestra. During a tour with this group, Sandoval visited the American Embassy in Rome to defect from Cuba. He became an American citizen on December 7, 1998.

Sandoval has performed Latin jazz with Paquito D’Rivera, Tito Puente, and Chico O’Farrill, Cuban music in Miami, and classical music in England and Germany. In the 1990s, he was a member of the GRP All-Star Big Band.