Jazz Articles about Omar Sosa

Omar Sosa: Live à Fip

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 18, 2007

Per la prima registrazione live con il suo quintetto, Omar Sosa ha scelto la Francia, paese che ama in modo particolare la musica del pianista cubano. Il primo brano si apre su un'introduzione di solo piano. Procede su una vena malinconica nella quale fatichiamo a riconoscere il Sosa cui siamo abituati e forse, proprio per questo, ci risulta piacevolmente sorprendente. Dopodiché il metronomo comincia a correre veloce. Le percussioni (tra cui ricordiamo il prematuramente scomparso Miguel Angá Diaz), le scansioni ...

Omar Sosa: Live a FIP

by Jason Crane
January 12, 2007

Omar Sosa: Live a FIP

by C. Michael Bailey
October 3, 2006

Omar Sosa is a Caribbean Thelonious Monk. While his compositions lack Monk's cranky angles, Sosa's songs nevertheless challenge and ultimately soothe the listener with their subtle harmonic turns and melodic velocity. Sosa's Monkness is more apparent in his solos, where he combines dissonance with a Don Pullen-like percussive approach. Sosa's beautiful pianism at first seems to have no form, but reveals its delicate latticework on subsequent listenings. Live à FIP is Sosa's first live recording since 2003's Aleatoric EFX: Live ...

Omar Sosa: Mulatos Remix

by AAJ Staff
May 2, 2006

Given the source material for this remix project, expectations will no doubt be running high. Mulatos (Ota, 2004) brought Cuban pianist Omar Sosa's multilateral vision to his broadest international audience to date, earning Grammy and BBC Radio 3 nominations for its warm, flowing sound (as well as a spot on my own short list).

Be prepared to scale back those expectations when you hit play on Mulatos Remix. It's only fair, really. These ten beat-heavy, loopy electronic remixes do a ...

Omar Sosa: Ballads

by Norman Weinstein
September 21, 2005

Perhaps this is the finest CD saddled with a concept I dislike that I've heard in years. Strange category? Yes, here we find one of the supreme Cuban jazz pianists of our era with a career retrospective of only ballads. It is one matter to provide a “John Coltrane for Lovers compilation--in fact there are two currently on the market--because Coltrane's oeuvre outside of ballads has long been available.

But Omar Sosa is not yet a force in the jazz ...

Omar Sosa: Mulatos

by Elliott Simon
March 27, 2005

On his latest release, pianist Omar Sosa has placed nine strong original compositions in the hands of creative improvisers from diverse ethnicities with striking results. A significant world music happening that succeeds on multiple levels, Mulatos allows Cuban, African, Middle-Eastern, and European musical traditions to remain true to their roots while they blend with American jazz to form a newly palpable whole. The traditional is certainly here, but Sosa's prudent use of sampling and drummer/producer Steve Argüelles' scratching ...

Omar Sosa at Yoshi's

by Forrest Dylan Bryant
March 13, 2005

“Another world is possible."When those four words bubbled to the surface of Omar Sosa's modern jazz stew at Yoshi's on March 2, they summed up the career of a musician who has spent years opening new vistas in Latin jazz. Weaving a magic circle of rhythm and invention around the packed club in a 90-minute first set, the Cuban-born pianist demonstrated not only the possibility of another world beyond the tidy pigeonholes of musical genre, but its immediate reality.