It’s been a year since UUPer Arturo O’Farrill won a Grammy Award for best Latin jazz album and he’s still jazzed about it.

“I’m still pretty amazed,” said O’Farrill, the director of the Purchase College Jazz Orchestra and head of Purchase’s Latin Jazz program. “We were up against some really big record companies. I guess … we were lucky.”

It was a lot more than luck that O’Farrill’s 2008 album, “Song for Chico,” beat out the likes of Latin jazz masters Papo Vasquez, Nestor Torres and the Caribbean Jazz Project for the Grammy.

The album, which honors his father, Chico, a big band leader and Latin jazz trailblazer who wrote and arranged music for Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton and Count Basie, seamlessly blends bebop and Afro-Cuban musical stylings with Arturo’s sassy, modern arrangements. The record, which features O’Farrill on piano backed by his hot Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, includes versions of “Caravan,” (made popular by Duke Ellington), Tito Puente’s “Picadillo,” and two of his father’s songs, “Cuban Blues” and “The Journey.”

“It kind of becomes a tribute to Chico because we patterned ourselves on what he did,” said O’Farrill. “I’m only doing as I was taught and what my children will do, hopefully. Teach them the music and that’s what makes it relevant.”

For O’Farrill, who has released more than half-dozen albums, including his latest “Risa Negra,” teaching music is a passion, just as playing music is a passion. And teaching at Purchase is, in a word, wonderful, he said.

“I was really floored when I joined the faculty and found (Purchase) to be one of the nation’s top-level conservatories” he said. “I don’t do this for the money, I do it as a choice.”

“My one regret in teaching is that I don’t have the time to devote to it that I wish I did. It’s a heavy responsibility and I take it very seriously.

“One of the most important people in my life was an American history teacher I had in college,” he continued. “This guy changed my life. For me, standing up in front of a group of students and doing anything less than being completely integral with them is a sham. My performance career is very alive, but I wish I was a better administrator of my time.”

He’s right about his performance career. For starters, O’Farrill has had a standing Sunday night gig at New York City’s famed Birdland for the last 14 years, leading his father’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra. He released two albums in 2008, “Song for Chico” and “In These Shoes,” a collaboration with vocalist Claudia Acuna on the Zoho Music label.

“Risa Negra,” featuring O’Farrill’s wife, Alison, and children (14-year-old trumpeter Adam and 17-year-old drummer Zachary), was released in October 2009.

The album won rave reviews from the likes of JazzReview magazine, which called it “one of the best of 2009, count on it.”

“This was really a labor of love for me and I’m really proud of it,” he said. “It’s a record that my wife plays on and my kids play on, and all the people on this record are family members.”

O’Farrill can’t hide his pride when he conducts Purchase’s Latin Jazz Orchestra, which he did in December in the college’s Performing Arts Center. The orchestra, made up of students from the School of the Arts Conservatory of Music, performed seven selections, including Chico O’Farrill’s “Manteca Suite,” and the title track from “Song for Chico.”

“I care a lot about the music and I always want the music to come out and reach people on the inside,” O’Farrill said.

— Michael Lisi