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.