[1] Miguel Villafruela began studying saxophone in his hometown of Holguín, Cuba, and continued them at the National School of Arts in Havana, with professors Osvaldo González and Carlos Averhoff where he graduated in 1976.
He has appeared with the National symphony orchestras of Chile, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Prague, Gulbenkian (Lisbon) and the Slovakian Chamber Orchestra among many others; and has performed in Montreal, Quebec City, Caracas, Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Berlin, Madrid, Cochabamba, Valencia, Helsinki, Managua, Sofia, Salle Cortot de Paris, Annecy, Warsaw, Kraków, Mexico, Lisbon, Vilnius, Riga, Budapest, Brussels, and other cities of the Americas, Europe and Asia.
By invitation of the University of Chile Music Department he founded in 1994 the first higher education Saxophone Faculty in that country.
He is frequently invited to give Master Classes at renowned music institutions all over the world.
[3] Miguel Villafruela has received numerous awards from such reputable institutions as the International Rostrum of Young Interpreters (Bratislava, 1979), the Leopold Bellan Contest (1980), the Pyongyant Festival (1990), the National Order of Culture in Cuba (1986) and of the Chilean's Society of Composers in 2001.