Enrique Calderon

Enrique Calderon was born in Chicago and raised in Harvey, IL. The call to music started at the age of nine when a trumpet was first placed in his hands. Due to great teachers, such as John Weber and Mike McGrath, Enrique experienced and learned classical and jazz music from elementary school throughout high school. At age 17, an interest in singing started to emerge but was never explored in front of an audience.

Fast forward to the mid-90s when he was introduced to salsa music being played all around Chicago nightclubs like Intas, Excalibur and Tropicana D’Cache to name a few. Listening to different Chicago salsa orchestras such as Orquesta Fuego, Orchestra Isla 809, and Orchestra Sabor started to truly captivate him into the salsa world. However, it was not until he heard Jesus Enriquez perform for the first time that he knew it was time to start performing in front of an audience. An opportunity arose in 1998 and Enrique started singing backup with Jesus Enriquez for over 2 years. He also traveled up and down the Midwest singing backup for other salsa legends such as Lalo Rodriguez, Cano Estremera, and Marvin Santiago among others. In 2000, Enrique along with his close friends Carlos Aquino and Carlos Santiago started their own band La Unica, further immersing themselves in the salsa scene. La Unica included singers such as Ricky Luis (formerly of N’Klabe) and Alex Torres (Rica Obsesion) and together they performed throughout Chicago. Among many others, he also performed as backup singer with artist such as Michael Stuart, Charlie Cruz, Frankie Negron, Miles Pena, Kevin Ceballo, George Lamond and Tito Puente Jr.

In 2004, Enrique took a break from singing and performing. He returned to the scene in 2011. He began performing again first with Denis Calito’s Rica Obsesion and later with Nabori from Milwaukee and Angel Rodrigues’s Humboldt Park Orchestra. He started performing as backup vocals with a new generation of salsa singers such as Willito Otero, Kayvan Vega, NG2, Carlos Mojica, Maelo Ruiz and Frankie Negron.

Enrique started his own band in July 2016 and continues to perform throughout Chicago. He also started diving into his creative side and began writing. Enrique worked together with Ricky Luis and Joe Mende to get started on producing new original music. He just finished recording his first single “Mas Tiempo which scheduled to be released on September 4, 2017. You can find Enrique performing once a month at Cubby Bear in Wrigleyville. He also performs in other various festival and nightclubs throughout Chicago as well.