Felix Contreras
Reporter/Producer, Arts Information Unit
Felix Contreras is a reporter and producer for NPR's Arts Information Unit, and he specializes in coverage of jazz, world music, and Latino arts and culture.
Some recent stories include a profile of New York City based Colombian musicians rediscovering traditional music from their homeland; an interview with Lorraine Gordon, the owner of the famed Village Vanguard and a memorial for legendary music producer Ahmet Ertegun.
Contreras also covers a wide variety of arts and media industry related subjects, including the growth and regulation of digital downloading, media issues before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well as other legal and technology issues.
Contreras is a former television journalist who has covered national and international news for both NBC and Univision (the dominant Spanish language TV network in the United States). While working as an assignment editor for NBC in Miami he covered the Elian Gonzales crisis as well as the 2000 Presidential election recount. In Fresno, California, he worked for an NBC station and covered earthquakes, wildfires, the riots after the Rodney King trial verdict, space shuttle landings, and every central California Presidential visit from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton.
His extensive background in the arts includes directing a Latin jazz festival in Fresno, university lecturing on Latino arts and culture, producing live performance programs for PBS and promoting concerts in the burgeoning rock en Español movement in the early 1990s.
Contreras is also a part time jazz musician (Afro Cuban percussionist) who performs on the East Coast with AfroBop, a 7-piece Latin jazz group.
He lives in Silver Spring, MD, with his wife and two children.
