Omar Sosa

Omar Sosa is a composer, percussionist, producer, and jazz pianist. He usually performs in various formations and groups, in addition to incorporating Afro-Caribbean music into his pieces.

In his music, Omar fuses a broad spectrum of world music and elements of contemporary electronics with his Afro-Cuban roots to create an urban, fresh, and original sound, all with the heart of Latin jazz.

He was born in Camagüey, and at age 8 he began studying percussion at the Camagüey conservatory. Subsequently, Sosa studied percussion at the National School of Music and the Superior Institute of Art. At the secondary and higher levels, he became interested in piano, which he studied at the National School of Music in Havana, completing his training at the Superior Institute of Art in the Cuban capital in 1983. Today, he is one of the most creative and outstanding pianists of the moment.

In the 1980s, he founded the band Tributo, recording albums and touring with the band. He worked with Cuban vocalist Xiomara Laugart and with troubadour Vicente Feliú and various Latin jazz bands.

In the 1990s, he moved from Cuba to Quito, Ecuador, where Omar discovered the folk music of Esmeraldas, a community of African origin known especially for the use of the marimba. In this country, he launched his own jazz-fusion ensemble, Entrenoz, and also produced Andarele, a recording by the Afro-Ecuadorian group Koral y Esmeralda.

Later he moved to Palma de Mallorca, Spain; then to the San Francisco Bay area in California, United States; and later settled in Barcelona, Spain.

While in California, Sosa released his first albums under his own name. He has been nominated for Grammy Awards four times for his albums, three in the Latin Jazz category, through 2020.

In January 2011, Sosa and NDR Bigband (the radio bigband of northern Germany) won the tenth Independent Music Award (IMA) in the Jazz Album category for Ceremony. He has also collaborated with Paolo Fresu, Seckou Keita, Adam Rudolph, and many other musicians.

Sosa has released most of his recordings on his own label Otá.

On stage, Omar is a charismatic figure who brings out the best in his fellow performers with his dynamic execution and improvisational ability, an approach full of emotional and spiritual force, and much humor.

Omar Sosa's creative vigor makes his music always seem like a premiere, and this is something that always fascinates both experts and fans alike, and generates a spontaneous connection with his audience. His music is a unique vision of Afro-Cuban jazz, and although it has a strong component in the traditions and folklore of Africa, his constant exploration of sonic possibilities shows that the jazz scene continues to move without resorting to retellings of the past. Omar Sosa blends jazz with Afro-Caribbean rhythms, combining it with different electronic effects and his passionate way of playing the piano, always escaping from orthodoxy toward creative freedom.

Omar Sosa performs more than one hundred concerts a year on stages around the world. He has performed in venues as diverse as the Blue Note in New York, Milan, and Tokyo; the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York; the Getty Center in Los Angeles; the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow; or the House of World Cultures in Berlin, among many others, as well as major jazz festivals.

His discography includes more than twenty of his own albums and numerous collaborations as a producer or guest musician that have received various awards, including several Grammy nominations for the albums Sentir (2002), Mulatos (2005) – with Cuban saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera – and Across the Divide: Tale of Rhythm & Ancestry (2009).

He has also composed music for film and television and has collaborated with different types of ensembles. He has written works for symphonic orchestras, such as the Oakland East Bay Symphony, and also presented live with orchestra his albums Afreecanos (2008) and Ceremony (2010), the latter with the NDR Hamburg Big Band and arrangements by Brazilian composer Jaques Morelenbaum.

Omar Sosa has worked on different projects with renowned Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. Among his collaborations, his album Transparent Water (2017) stands out, a beautiful-sounding album that also includes the participation of Senegalese singer and kora interpreter Seckou Keita.

His album "AGUAS" presented in 2018 is an ingenious and captivating blend of the artists' Afro-Cuban roots, Western classical music, and jazz. The album is dedicated to Water and especially to Oshun, the Goddess of Love and Mistress of Rivers in the Lucumí tradition or Santería, as it is called in Cuba, an important spiritual practice. Since water is synonymous with life, energy, force, and space, the music on the album is inspired by the important influences of water: its hidden powers, its infinite transmutations, its incessant creation.

Discography

Solo Piano, originally released as Omar Omar (Otá, 1996)
Nfumbe: For the Unseen, with John Santos (Otá/ PriceClub, 1997)
Free Roots (Otá, 1997)
Inside (Otá, 1998)
Spirit of the Roots (Otá, 1999)
Bembon (Otá, 2000)
Prietos (Otá, 2000)
Sentir (Otá, 2002)
Ayaguna, with Gustavo Ovalles (Otá, 2003)
A New Life (Otá, 2003)
Pictures of Soul, with Adam Rudolph (Otá/Meta Records, 2004)
Aleatoric Efx (Otá, 2004)
Mulatos (Ota, 2004)
Mulatos Remix (Otá, 2005)
Live à FIP (Otá, 2006)
Promise, with Paolo Fresu (Otá/ Skip[de], 2007)
DO: A Day Off, with Greg Landau (Otá, 2007)
Afreecanos (Otá, 2008)
Tales from the Earth A Tale of Rhythm and Ancestry, with Mark Weinstein (Otá, 2009)
Across the Divide (Half Note Records, 2009)
Simb, with Adam Rudolph (Otá/Meta Records, 2009)
Ceremony, with NDR Bigband (Otá, 2010)
Calma (Otá, 2011)
Alma, with Paolo Fresu (Otá, 2012)
Eggun: The Afri-Lectric Experience (Otá, 2013)
Sentidos (Otá, 2014)
ile (Ota, 2015)
Jog, with de:Joo Kraus and Gustavo Ovalles (Otá, 2016)
Eros, with Paolo Fresu (2016)
Es:Sensual, with NDR Big Band (Skip/Otá, 2017/2018)
Transparent Water, with Seckou Keita (Otá, 2017)
Aguas, with Yilian Cañizares (Otá, 2018)
An East African Journey (Otá, 2021)
SUBA, with Sekou Keita (Otá, 2021)

Awards

Jazz Journalist Association, Best Afro-Caribbean Jazz Album
Grammy Latino Nominee, 2002, Best Latin Jazz Album
Grammy Nominee for CD "Sentir", 2003, Best Latin Jazz Album
Lifetime Achievement Award, Smithsonian Institution, 2003
BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards Nominee, 2004
BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards Nominee, 2006
Grammy Nominee for CD "Mulatos", 2006, Best Latin Jazz Album