Freddie Ravel

Ravel was born and bred in Los Angeles to a Ukrainian-German-Polish father and a Colombian mother. He started playing the accordion at the age of 7 then moved on to play the drums, guitar and eventually the piano. He later received his Bachelor's Degree in Music graduating with cum laude honors from California State University. Ravel began performing around the world at age 23 with Brazilian icon Sergio Mendes where he was later signed by Universal Records. He eventually released three solo studio albums; Midnight Passion, Sol to Soul and Freddie Ravel. During 1988 Ravel became the musical director for Indian violinist L. Subramaniam. Within the following year he became a member of Sergio Mendes's band. Ravel went on to join Earth, Wind & Fire in 1992 as the band's musical director. He thus played on their 1993 album Millennium. Millennium has since been certified Gold in Japan by the RIAJ. He also featured on Flora Purim's 1994 album Speed of Light. After four years with EWF he went on perform with Madonna on the soundtrack of the 1996 feature film Evita. He also played on Peter White's 1997 LP Songs of the Season. During 1998 Ravel became Jazz musician Al Jarreau's musical director. He went on to produce Jarreau on his 2000 album Tomorrow Today. The album rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. Ravel later performed and co-wrote on Jarreau's 2002 album All I Got. …