Jazz Articles about Omar Sosa

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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.

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Omar Sosa: Mulatos

by Chris May
November 24, 2004

"File under Latin Jazz" reads the message to the retailer on the cover of this adventurous, finely wrought and wholly delightful melange of Cuban jazz, Latin dance grooves, French chanson, North African trance music and European folk. And yes, it is Latin jazz, Jim, but not as we generally know it.

Less a conscious, structured world music fusion than some of Sosa's previous projects, and more a free flowing collaboration between musicians from different cultural backgrounds, Mulatos falls into none ...

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Omar Sosa: Aleatoric EFX: Live Solo Concert - Radio Bremen

by C. Michael Bailey
August 7, 2004

It may be a bit disingenuous to say that Aleatoric EFX may become the next Köln Concert. Keith Jarrett's 1975 masterpiece could legitimately claim to have given birth to the New Age music genre. By today's standards, the Köln Concert perhaps does not seem so novel. It seems our sensibilities may need to be pushed a little, and Omar Sosa is here to do that. A native of Camaguey, Cuba, Sosa offers a quietly impressionistic vision of Latin-African-Caribbean music to ...

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Omar Sosa and Adam Rudolph: Pictures of Soul

by Rex Butters
May 2, 2004

After several recorded sessions with large ensembles, hand drumming honcho Adam Rudolph finds himself on a duet recording with Cuban pianist Omar Sosa. On Pictures of Soul the match works, revealing two gifted expressionists, masters of their instruments with the imaginations to go beyond their builders’ designs. Which is not to suggest a raucous blow fest; these free improvisers fearlessly weave beauty into the fabric of their play. With Sosa inside the piano zinging strings, Rudolph lightly scatters ...

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Omar Sosa: Ayaguna

by AAJ Staff
April 7, 2003

It's almost like the calm after the storm, but if you look carefully there are still whitecaps out there. Pianist Omar Sosa, who emigrated from Cuba eight years ago, launched his American recording career with the somewhat redundantly titled Omar Omar, an adventurous solo outing. His last three records (Bembon, Prietos, and Sentir) were incredibly ambitious ensemble affairs which brought together a virtual rainbow of New World styles drawing from common African roots. In each case, the intensity of the ...