Maestro Larry Bellorín

His mother was a poor farmworker. By age 6, he became a shoe shiner and built a faithful clientele by singing as he polished. He eventually caught the attention of a local music educator who invited him to study at the city’s premier music school.

Larry’s first instrument was the cuatro, a 4-string guitar central to the Venezuelan identity and typically the first instrument a folk musician is taught there. Larry quickly excelled and by age 11 was supporting himself through music alone. He soon became proficient on guitar, electric bass, mandolin and maracas. By age 13, he was well-versed in the folk music of his region and was honored as first cuatrista for the local Casa de Cultura.

After filling in on cuatro for a friend on a gig at a local pizzeria, Larry met an authentic llanera harpist named Urbino Ruiz, who immediately took him under his wing as an apprentice. After only a month of tutelage, Larry had a repertoire of 40 songs. “I played so much, I would wake up hunched over my harp,” he recalls.

In 1999, Urbino invited Larry to perform with him alongside Venezuelan famous singer-songwriter and GRAMMY winner Reynaldo Armas at the Punta de Mata’s Parque Ferial, where Armas officially introduced him to the crowd of more than 8,000 people as “Maestro Larry Bellorín.”

Larry went on to accompany countless Venezuelan musical luminaries and perform across the country. He and his wife opened Casa Vieja, a school dedicated to teaching Música Llanera. In three years, he taught nearly five hundred students and launched Monagas’ first Música Llanera festival.

In 2012 Venezuela began to collapse, and new political realities threatened Larry and his family’s lives. He decided to go to the United States in search of work and asylum for his family. He arrived with only thirty dollars and slept on the floor of an unfurnished room while doing construction day labor. His wife and young daughter eventually joined him. Having faced political persecution, they were able to open a case for asylum. Eight years later, their asylum case is still pending.

Sometimes Larry was able to find gigs as a musician in North Carolina as a bass and folk player. In December 2021, he met GRAMMY-nominated Latingrass multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Joe Troop, bandleader of the now-disbanded Che Apalache. It was musical love at first sound, and the two quickly formed the Venezuelan-Appalachian folk fusion duo Larry & Joe.

Larry & Joe has become Larry’s principal project, and he quit his job in construction in January 2023 to tour nationwide with Joe, offering outstanding performances and workshops.

In July 2025, Larry invites Ramón, Jose and Angela with the idea of forming a Llanera Harp quartet and so Arpa Nova Project was born after a few meetings of jamming and sharing traditional foods and stories from Colombia and Venezuela.

More than anything, he enjoys spending time with his wife Athais, daughters Esther and Ivanka, and other family and friends.