Gina Benalcázar-López
Low Brass Specialist | Composer and Arranger | Band Leader | Educator
About Ginita
Photography by: Natalie Peña Peart
Gina Benalcázar-López is an Ecuadorian-Honduran-American composer and low brass specialist. Influenced by straight-ahead jazz, latin-jazz, popular Latin American music, and musical theater, Ginita has performed with and arranged/composed for various size bands ranging in style from Classical Chamber to Jazz Big Band and Salsa Bands as well as Broadway orchestras and other theater productions. She composes for her Latin-jazz ensemble, La Orquesta Esa and is the resident arranger for NYC’s all women salsa band, Lulada Club.
She has worked as a side person with some of the world's most prolific band leaders and can be found playing with Lulada Club, The Broadway Sinfonietta, The Roy Hargrove Big Band, Etienne Charles’ Creole Soul, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, The Rufus Reid Big Band, The Dee Dee Bridgewater Big Band, Ulysses Owens Jr’s New Century Big Band, Helen Sung’s Big Band, and made her Broadway debut in Huey Lewis’ “The Heart of Rock and Roll.”
Ginita’s discography is expansive, credited her as both soloist and arranger/composer as a side-person. As a band leader Gina was selected as a recipient of Chamber Music America’s Performance Plus Grant which helped her record her debut album, “The BOUNCE” featuring her original compositions. Her collective Lulada Club will also be releasing two new original tunes co-composed by the members of the band in March 2024. She is currently gearing up to record a new series of repertoire with La Orquesta Esa.
