Four Grammy nominations, three Latin Grammy nominations, and two BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards. Twice awarded by the Jazz Journalists Association of New York. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the Smithsonian Associates in Washington for his contribution to the development of Latin jazz in the United States.
The list of accolades alone hardly suffices to convey the artistic stature and international standing of Omar Sosa, composer and pianist, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading figures in Afro-Caribbean jazz. Fresh from recent performances in the United States and Canada, the refined Cuban musician will perform in Manduria on Friday, April 17, in the hall of the Museum of Primitivo Wine Civilization. The event marks the second seasonal appointment of Acustica10, a successful concert series organized by the Produttori di Manduria winery and Artilibrio, under the artistic direction of Salvatore Moscogiuri.
In the Messapian town, Sosa will present Sendas, the latest of his thirty-five albums as a bandleader, alongside numerous additional recordings made through collaborations over the course of his career. Blending Latin, African, and classical influences, the concert unfolds in countless emotional directions, opened by solo piano improvisations enriched with carefully integrated electronic sounds. The atmosphere created by Sosa is dreamlike and lunar—almost a weightless walk along contemplative paths (as suggested by the Spanish title), each leading to new ones in a potentially infinite process. “What remains after listening,” noted Riccardo Talamazzi in Off Topic Magazine, “is not merely the perception of the pieces, but the clear sensation of having lingered in a border zone, in a space where identity dissolves and is continuously regenerated.”
Performing over a hundred concerts a year across all continents, Sosa has graced some of the world’s most prestigious stages over the past three decades, including the Blue Note clubs in New York, Tokyo, and Milan, Carnegie Hall in New York, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. He is also a frequent presence at major festivals such as Monterey Jazz, JVC Jazz, Montreal Jazz, Marciac Jazz, North Sea Jazz, Grenoble Jazz, Montreux Jazz, WOMAD, and the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
Noteworthy is also his tribute to Miles Davis’s album Kind of Blue, commissioned in 2009 by the Barcelona Jazz Festival, which Sosa made memorable with his brilliant Afro-Cuban reinterpretations of the album’s tracklist.
In Italy, the Cuban artist has performed at jazz festivals in Rome, Naples, Ravenna, and Spoleto, as well as at Umbria Jazz, where he has appeared in a well-established duo with trumpeter Paolo Fresu.
In an article for the renowned jazz magazine Jazzwise, critic Jane Cornwell wrote: “Omar Sosa channels his onstage charisma and finger-tip inventiveness into building bridges between ancestral rhythms and free-flowing jazz” An ethereal architecture of the soul that Acustica10 audiences will be able to experience live at the Museum of Primitivo Wine.
The April 17 event, with free admission, will begin at 8:00 PM. Doors open at 7:30 PM.
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