PHIL RODRIGUEZ is a trumpet player, composer, improviser, and educator. Phil has been a longstanding member of nationally acclaimed funk/soul/rock band Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds, racking up over 700 live performances around the U.S. and Canada, and recording four studio releases and a double live album since 2011. He has also been a member of Vermont vocalist Kat Wright's touring band, and in 2019 toured Europe with indie-folk icon Beirut.
Phil maintains a bi-coastal career as a freelance performer, sideman, touring musician, studio session player, and private instructor, having spent considerable time in a variety of music scenes including Los Angeles, New York City, North Carolina, New England and Atlanta, having cut his teeth alongside some of the finest performers and studio musicians across the country. He has performed and recorded in a wide range of musical contexts, including with pop, rock, funk and soul bands, singer-songwriters, jazz big bands and small groups, commercial and pops orchestras, contemporary music chamber ensembles, as well as avant-garde jazz and improvised music ensembles. He also leads and composes for his own instrumental ensembles and recording projects.
Phil has appeared on stage with names as diverse as Stevie Wonder, David Byrne, Michael Bublé, Diana Krall, Quincy Jones, Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton, Jane Monheit, Barry Manilow, Bonnie Raitt, The Wood Brothers, Bernard Purdie, Robert Randolph, Anders Osborne, Butch Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, Roosevelt Collier, The North Mississippi Allstars, Taj Mahal. The Ghost of Paul Revere. Guster, and Model Airplane; as a studio musician his horn work has appeared on releases from artists such as Moe., Hercules & Love Affair, Brian Harnetty, The Ballroom Thieves, Eleanor Friedberger, Wires Under Tension, Siren Section, and Jenny Owen Youngs. Phil's trumpet playing has also appeared on film and television soundtracks, including a collaboration with composer and 2025 MacArthur Fellow Heather Christian on The Shivering Truth Season 2 (2020, Adult Swim), The Whitest Kids U' Know Season 3 (2009, IFC); and Boss'n Up (2005) featuring Snoop Dogg. He has recorded, performed and toured as a member of East West Quintet, a NYC-based instrumental jazz/rock/fusion group which Downbeat magazine hailed as a "clever, highly disciplined instrumental unit." Phil was also a member of Industrial Jazz Group, an adventurous and irreverent large ensemble led by composer Andrew Durkin, with whom Phil recorded two albums and toured the U.S. and Europe. In a review of IJG's 2004 release, The Star Chamber, Wire magazine gives mention to Phil as an "outstanding soloist" for his trumpet work on the album. Phil has toured Japan three times as a member of the Percy Faith Orchestra, and toured the U.S. in 2004 with Concord recording artist Monica Mancini, daughter of composer Henry Mancini, performing over 50 shows with her band.
Phil earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he studied trumpet with Bobby Shew and Clay Jenkins. In 2000, Phil was the winner of the L.A. Philharmonic Jazz Trumpet Fellowship award and was invited to sit in at the Hollywood Bowl with the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra alongside Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton and Jon Faddis. The fellowship also included trumpet lessons with CHJO trumpeters Oscar Brashear and Bobby Rodriguez. Upon graduating high school, Phil was accepted to the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles, a professional summer music residency aimed at preparing college and post-college music students for a career in commercial music. While at HMI, Phil had the opportunity to study trumpet with Charlie Davis and legendary session trumpeter Uan Rasey, as well as perform under the direction of Gunther Schuller, Vince Mendoza and Quincy Jones, Jack Elliot, Patrick Williams, and Justin DiCoccio while performing behind many notable guest soloists.
Phil began studying classical piano at age five, and at age 12 he took up studying trumpet with Bob Ontiveros. He is an alumnus of the Santa Barbara Music and Arts Conservatory, as well as Santa Barbara High School's award-winning jazz big band and combo under the direction of Ike Jenkins, a local music education icon who Phil credits with inspiring him to pursue a career in music. Phil won several awards as an outstanding trumpet soloist while in high school, and the Santa Barbara High School Jazz Combo won "Best Overall Instrumental Ensemble" at the 1998 Reno International Jazz Festival. That ensemble would evolve to become known as The Buster T. Farmsworth Quintet. Heavily inluenced by the sounds of Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus and New York's downtown scene of the 1990's, BTFQ forged a fearless brand of collective improvisation and sonic exploration, garnering a reputation locally for their adventurous, unpredictably transcendent weekly performances at a downtown Santa Barbara art house during their respective college breaks. In a review of one of the group's live performances, jazz critic Joe Woodard wrote in the Santa Barbara Independent, “Phil keeps his melodic glow about him, with a voice sometimes reminiscent of new trumpet hero Dave Douglas.”