As a part of the 38th Belgrade Jazz Festival, the RTS Big Band and the Omar Sosa trio (Cuba/Mozambique) will perform at the MTS concert hall on october 30th, at 20h.

Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa was born in Camagüey (1965) and studied in Havana, finishing his formal education at eighteen. Among his influences, he points out Afro-Cuban traditional music, European classics (Chopin, Bach, Satie) and jazz (Monk, Coltrane, Parker, Hancock, Corea, Jarrett, Oscar Peterson, Chucho Valdés, Irakere…). He left Cuba in the 1990s to live in Ecuador, the USA and Spain.

Sosa combines various aspects of jazz, world music and electronica with his Afro-Cuban roots, creating a fresh and original urban sound emotionally steeped in Latin jazz. Since 1996, he has released 34 albums in various formations, from solo piano releases, through duos and small ensembles, to programs with large orchestras, most on his Otá Records label. Among the many artists he has collaborated with are Paquito D’Rivera, Paolo Fresu, Adam Rudolph, Seckou Keita, Yilian Cañizares, Peter Apfelbaum, Lionel Loueke and Marvin Sewell.

He is a seven-time Grammy or Latin Grammy nominee, two-time BBC Radio 3 nominee, winner of the German ECHO Award for Orchestral Jazz Album of the Year (Ceremony, with NDR Big Band 2011), two Jazz Journalists Association awards, and the Smithsonian Institute Lifetime Achievement Award. The Es:sensual program he will perform in Belgrade is deeply immersed in the Afro-Cuban tradition, presenting a dedication to numerous heroes of this genre. Sosa prepared the album of the same name with the arranger Jaques Morelenbaum and recorded it with the NDR Big Band in 2018, with a triumphant presentation at notable world jazz destinations.

The RTS Big Band was founded in 1948 in the formation of the pops orchestra with horns. The founder and the first conductor was Mladen Bobby Guteša. When Guteša left the country (in 1953), Vojislav Bubiša Simić took over the band and, upon separating the string orchestra, turned the band into a true jazz ensemble – first under the influence of Glenn Miller, later Count Basie and Quincy Jones. In 1960, at the Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins (France), the ensemble won the first prize in the orchestra category, leading them to international stages and collaboration with the greatest jazz stars. After Simić, the Band leaders were Zvonimir Skerl, Milivoje Marković, Stjepko Gut, Duško Gojković and Ivan Ilić. Bora Roković, Mile Pavlović and Lala Kovačev are some of the soloists who later made international careers.

Since 2015, the band managed to release four albums: Balkan Soul, Latin Haze (with Duško Gojković), Aquarelle (with Samuel Blaser) and Mimo od Budve (recordings with Mimo Mitrović). Ever since the revival of the Belgrade Jazz festival, the RTS Big Band has always performed with notable guests: Benny Golson (2006), Jon Faddis (2008), Duško Gojković and Peter King (2011), Bert Joris (2013), Christof Lauer (2015) and Bobby Shew (2018).

After many years at the helm of the orchestra, Dragoslav Fredi Stanisavljević became the executive director of RTS Music Production, and trumpeter Marko Đorđević took over as editor. The orchestra has been highly active in the last year, collaborating with prominent artists, including Peter Reiter-Schaub (jazz adaptation of Tosca), Lana Janjanin and Dina Rizvić, Nils Wogram, Vladimir Nikolov, Nenad Vasilić and Stjepko Gut.