OMAR SOSA PRESS CLIPS
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Melodia.com, Omar Sosa Press Clips, 01/01/01 >>
"Sosa moves from delicate, unabashedly romantic melodies to wild blasts of percussive noise in a manner that recalls the best of Keith Jarrett."
Joel Roberts, ALLABOUTJAZZ, April 2003
"Omar Sosa is a fusion artist in the best sense of the word.
The virtuosic pianist mixes his Cuban roots with tastes of bebop, free jazz,
even hip-hop and electronica, into a strikingly fresh and spicy modern
stew that's much more than the sum of its ingredients."
Joel Roberts, ALLABOUTJAZZ, April 2003
"Sosa is shaping a new synthesis of Latin and American jazz."
Philip Van Vleck, BILLBOARD, February 22, 2003
"A new phase in the jazz and Cuban music linkage is being unveiled by gifted pianist Omar Sosa. Previous blendings of the two genres have tended to emphasize the powerful energies of Afro-Cuban rhythms in combination with the harmonic structures and improvisational qualities of jazz. Sosa, however, has moved beyond the parallelism of musical elements into a kind of natural, organic expressiveness in which the music's separate identities are replaced by a seamless, creative mutuality."
Don Heckman, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 19, 2003
"Omar Sosa has all the traits necessary to become
one of the important figures in jazz."
Don Heckman, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 19, 2003
"Globalization might be an abstract concept for many, but for pianist, composer and arranger Omar Sosa it's a very real, personal matter. Born in Camagüey, Cuba, Sosa toured and recorded, early in his career, in places such as Angola, Congo, Ethiopia, Spain and Mexico. He has lived and worked in Quito, Ecuador, and San Francisco, California, and now has settled in Barcelona, Spain. Not surprisingly, his music is an exploration of African culture with a global perspective. In Sosa's pan-African/pan-Latin approach, Orisha music, hip-hop, rumba, Ecuadorian chants, jazz, and Gnawa ritual music are just different expressions of the same culture.
In his music, concepts, instruments, grooves and textures from
disparate traditions overlap, blend and collide with deceptive ease.
The results are both fresh and illuminating."
Fernando Gonzalez, DOWN BEAT, May 2002
"Cuban pianist Omar Sosa has earned a reputation as a kinetic performer from his beginnings in Cuba to his first foreign residence in Ecuador, later in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now in Paris and his new home, Barcelona. His latest CD, 'Sentir', is a truly groundbreaking recording that manages to fuse Afro-Cuban folklore with jazz attitude and hip-hop overlay. A profound conception that is brilliantly constructed, 'Sentir' is the soulful expression of a spiritual and talented musician who has successfully synthesized a variety of complex musical traditions into an utterly unique experience."
Robert Leaver, THE BEAT, April, 2002
"Sosa's performance was an extraordinary example of state-of-the-art world jazz, splendidly illustrating how entrancing the music can become when it is open and receptive to global input and interaction."
Don Heckman, LOS ANGELES TIMES, April 18, 2002
"Sosa is one of the truly illuminated minds of world jazz."
Philip Van Vleck, BILLBOARD, March 23, 2002
"At the core of Sosa's music, there's the impulse to connect disparate sources, to explore old links, to make an ancient culture whole again by pushing it forward."
Fernando Gonzalez, THE WASHINGTON POST, March 13, 2002
"Although Cuba has produced more than its share of leonine jazz pianists, Sosa stands out among them, and not only because of the crystalline beauty of his touch and the nimbleness of his technique. A deeply spiritual player, Sosa more often than not puts his virtuosity aside to play the simplest, single-note melody or to linger over a radiant, chorale-like series of harmonies."
Howard Reich, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, March 11, 2002
"Sosa is a versatile pianist with a big sound, especially strong in the extreme registers, and his fast fingers dig into montunos and Herbie Hancock jazz chords."
Ben Ratliff, THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 15, 2002
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