Omar Sosa

Composer-pianist-band leader Omar Sosa’s musical trajectory traces the Diaspora from Cuba to Africa and Brazil; from Central America to Ecuador’s African-descent communities; from San Francisco and New York to Western Europe and the Mediterranean. True to his Afro-Cuban origins, Sosa fashions a spirited vision of uncompromising artistic generosity that embraces humanity at large. Winner of the Smithsonian Associates’ lifetime achievement award, nominated seven times for GRAMMY awards and twice for the BBC World Music Awards, Omar Sosa entwines the cultural traditions of Africa, Europe, and the Americas in a unique cosmopolitan voice. He articulates a brilliant, thoroughly contemporary global jazz idiom that assumes new form via a joyous, open-hearted, collaborative approach to musical creativity. Whether as a soloist, ensemble player, or bandleader, Omar Sosa creates a music that is simultaneously his own and the world’s—reflecting an immersion in the batá drumming of Santería, the lyricism of the Cuban danzón, the Arabic lute or oud, North African percussion, European classical music, and world jazz. Sosa’s attentive and imaginative melding of sounds from around the world marks him as a courageous and original global artist for the twenty-first century.