By Paul Yarbrough for the UCCA
On April 6, at 2 p.m., the Ukiah Community Concert Association will welcome international super-star composer/pianist Omar Sosa and his Quarteto Americanos to the Mendocino College Center Theatre stage.
Sosa, originally from Cuba, performs all over the world, and with an astonishing variety of collaborating artists. The public relations media, with its penchant for labeling everything, would like to refer to him as a jazz pianist, but in a Zoom call from Barcelona, he emphatically stated, “I am not a jazz musician!”
The mis-labeling might be because of the extreme freedom in his improvisations, but he stresses that he doesn’t employ the standard forms of jazz. “I am not a Be-Bop player!” he adds with a big grin. Whatever you want to call it, Omar Sosa’s style is a synthesis of a myriad of influences ranging from traditional Cuban popular music, danzon, charanga and salsa, to classical, Latin Jazz, rock, hip-hop, and trance music.
Fortunately, labeling the music isn’t required for listeners to receive Sosa’s gift to us, as we experience the serenity, joyfulness and profundity of his unique music making.
Born in the early years after the Cuban Revolution, Omar Sosa began musical studies in his native Camaguey as a percussionist, but grew bored with the lack of possibility for melody and harmony. And his desire to specialize in vibraphone was thwarted by the fact that there were only five vibraphones in all of Cuba.
Omar took up piano as a teenager at the Escuela National de Musica in Havana, and finished his studies at the Instituto Superior de Arte. These schools were modeled after a Russian music conservatory, and there he encountered the great European repertoire as well as rigorous studies in Music Theory and Composition. His exposure to the forbidden fruit of contemporary American music came largely from surreptitious listening to Miami radio, where he first heard jazz, rock and pop. It blew his mind.
Sosa came to the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid 1990s. The several years he spent there were formational for him, and the impact he had on various musical scenes is still felt today. Two of the members of the Quarteto Americanos, Sheldon Brown (saxophones), and Josh Jones (drums), performed with Sosa in those days.
Brown, a talented composer in his own right, was a part of Sosa’s first septet which recorded his seminal “Roots Trilogy,” and Jones played with Sosa frequently in Bay Area clubs and remains one of his favorite drummers.
Baby bass player Ernesto Mazar Kindelan is a dynamic Cuban musician who came to the Bay Area in 2014 after a 10-year stint with Charanga Habanera, the celebrated timba band from Havana. The Quarteto Americanos is Omar Sosa’s first American-based group since the 1990s.
Life hasn’t always been easy for Omar Sosa. He became homeless at one point and was conscripted to fight in the Cuban Army in the Cold War proxy conflict in Angola. Painful experience has only deepened his music, but never is there cynicism. He attributes his joyous and playful approach to his Santeria practice. Now nearly 60, he’s lost none of his youthful nature. “I’m still 25…. with a few aches” (followed by laughter). When I expressed my admiration for Barcelona, he said, “I don’t live in Barcelona …. I have a studio here and in Bari, Italy and New York, but I am a nomad. Home is ’la maleta’ (the suitcase).”
For a deeper look at Sosa’s life, I highly recommend the newly released feature length documentary, “Omar Sosa’s 88 Well-Tuned Drums,” available on Amazon TVOD. It is a remarkably well-produced portrait of this brilliant citizen of the world. In the meantime, don’t miss the opportunity to experience Sosa and his exceptional musical compatriots live!
Tickets are available for purchase at Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah and Mazahar in Willits (payment by cash or check only), and online at www.ukiahconcerts.org. Single tickets are $35 if purchased ahead, and $40 at the door. UCCA offers free tickets to youth 17 and under who are accompanied by an adult and to full-time college students (12 units). Free tickets must be reserved by calling (707) 463-2738 and providing name, phone number and email address.
Thank you to our sponsors for their generous support: Arts Council of Mendocino, KZYX&Z, KWINE, The Ukiah Daily Journal, Black Oak Coffee, Schat’s Bakery, Lost in the Cellar, Graziano Family of Wines, Cesar Toxqui Cellars, W/E Flowers, Mendocino College Foundation and Mendocino College Recording Arts & Technology Program.
Ukiah Community Concert Association has been presenting nationally acclaimed talent since 1947. This all-volunteer nonprofit’s mission is to build and maintain a permanent concert audience and cultivate an interest in fine music of all genres among the citizens of the community and surrounding area. It is also its goal to encourage music appreciation in the schools of the community.
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