Juan D. Toledo

This guitarist and composer is originally from Chile and has lived most of his life in Toronto, where he has been composing since the late 1980's and started playing and recording Rock music in various local bands - including touring with and opening for bands such as I Mother Earth 7 Jeff Healy.

Passionate to grow as a musician, he started studying Jazz and East Indian music with Michael Kleniec, it was also at this time that he started experimenting with Gamelan guitar playing inspired by Robert Fripp & Adrian Belew from the legendary band King Crimson.

He also spend sometime playing in multicultural groups such as Maiz Verde & Mistral (South American Andean Folk), with whom he toured Western Canada, Ontario and Quebec.

In the 1990's he discovered and fell in love with Flamenco music. he has developed as a Flamenco guitarist under the tutelage of Flamenco guitar master Miguel de la Bastide since 1997, where he learned how to accompany Flamenco dance and "cante" (singing). Also during this time he met Jesse Cook and played in his band at the Toronto Film Festival and at some shows in Las Vegas. To complement his continued involvement in the Flamenco and World Music scene, he is part of the Camen Romero Flamenco Dance Company, the Miguel de la Bastide Flamenco Music Group and the Indiantouch Orchestra, a group of East Indian musicians featuring guest singer Shahid Ali Kahn (Nusrat Ali Khan's nephew).

Juan Dino has composed much of the material in and recorded both CDs with Santerias. he is also one of the composers and lead guitarist for SolAzul, a successful worldwide-release Drum and Bass project.  Juan Dino has also composed music for documentaries and commercials for TV and radio, he's also been on videos for Bravo and TMN.

At present he is about to embark on a solo guitar project where he plans to use every style of guitar playing he's learned on his musical journey.

http://www.santerias.ca/musicians/juandino.asp