Omar Sosa Quarteto Americanos

Quarteto Americanos is Omar Sosa’s first U.S.-based jazz ensemble since the 1990s! Featuring drummer Josh Jones, bassist Ernesto Mazar Kindelán, and saxophone / clarinet / flute player Sheldon Brown, the group came together in February 2021 when Omar was in the Bay Area for several live streams. Connecting with Josh and Sheldon was a gratifying reunion for Omar, as he played extensively with them during his early days in San Francisco and Oakland in the late 1990s. Josh Jones’ Trio at the time, including Omar and bassist Geoff Brennan, played frequently at Bay Area clubs. Josh remains one of Omar’s favorite drummers - a versatile musician and educator equally at home in Latin, jazz, hip-hop, and fusion styles. Sheldon Brown was a member of Omar’s first Septet ensemble in the Bay Area, performing in San Francisco and Oakland and around the world in support of Omar’s earliest recording projects, ‘Free Roots’, ‘Spirit of the
Roots’, and ‘Bembón’, also known as the Roots Trilogy. Sheldon is a talented composer, arranger and producer whose first recording, ‘Shifting Currents‘, caught Omar’s ear when he first moved to San Francisco in 1995. Ernesto Mazar Kindelán is a dynamic Cuban musician who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014 following a ten-year stint with Charanga Habanera, the celebrated Cuban timba band from Havana.
Omar’s Quarteto Americanos plays a number of arrangements of Omar’s signature compositions from his early career, including ‘My Three Notes’, ‘Angustia’, and ‘Toridanzón’, as well as new songs written by Omar in Barcelona during the lockdown in 2020. Like Omar’s oeuvre, Quarteto Americanos’ repertoire is eclectic and energizing. Its improvisational approach seamlessly fuses elements of jazz, Latin, hip-hop, and electronica into an exciting, passionate, contemporary sound.

Cuban composer and pianist Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene today. He fuses a wide range of jazz, world music, and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a fresh and original urban sound – all with a Latin jazz heart. Omar Sosa’s musical trajectory has taken him from Camagüey and Havana to touring in Angola, the Congo, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua in the 1980s; to a sojourn in the African-descent communities of Ecuador in the early 1990s; to an extended presence on the San Francisco Bay Area Latin jazz scene; to his current engagement with artists from France, Cuba, Brazil, and several North, West, and East African nations.
His career embodies the expansive outlook of a visionary artist who has taken Monk’s uncompromising spirit to heart, while working ceaselessly to craft and project a unique, cosmopolitan voice.

Mr. Sosa received a lifetime achievement award from the Smithsonian Associates in Washington, DC in 2003 for his contribution to the development of Latin jazz in the United States. Over the years, Omar has been nominated six times for a GRAMMY and twice for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards. In 2003 he received the Afro-Caribbean Jazz Album of the Year Award from the Jazz Journalists Association in NYC for his recording Sentir; and a nomination from the Jazz Journalists Association for Latin Jazz Album of the Year in 2005 for his recording Mulatos, featuring Paquito D’Rivera. In 2008, Omar Sosa was commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Oakland East Bay Symphony to compose a major work for symphony orchestra (From Our Mother), supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2009, Omar was invited by the city of Girona, Spain and the Festival de Músicas Religiosas y del Mundo de Girona to write another work for symphony orchestra (Oda Africana). Also in 2009 the Barcelona Jazz Festival commissioned a tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue recording, featuring Afro-Cuban interpretations of the seminal Davis work on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. The compositions from this Kind Of Blue tribute form the basis of Omar’s new CD, Eggun, released in February 2013, with his new band, The Afri-Lectric Experience, featuring Joo Kraus on trumpet, Peter Apfelbaum on tenor saxophone, and Leandro Saint-Hill on alto saxophone. Special guests include Lionel Loueke and Marvin Sewell on guitars, and Pedro Martinez, John Santos, and Gustavo Ovalles on percussion.

Omar’s CD release with the NDR Bigband, Ceremony, received an ECHO Jazz Award in 2011 for Big Band Album of the Year.

In January 2012, Omar collaborated with celebrated Italian trumpet and flugelhorn player, Paolo Fresu, on the release of Alma. The CD features guest cello contributions on four tracks by the masterful Brazilian conductor, arranger, producer, and cellist, Jaques Morelenbaum (who also did the big band arrangements for Ceremony). Also in 2012, Mr. Sosa served as president of the jury for the Golden Jazz Trophy Awards in Arras, France.

Mr. Sosa was born in Camagüey, Cuba in 1965. He moved to Havana in 1980 to continue his music studies at the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Música, finishing his formal training at the Instituto Superior de Arte in 1983. Among his influences, Omar cites traditional Afro-Cuban music, European classical composers (including Chopin, Bartok, and Satie), Monk, Coltrane, Parker, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Chucho Valdés, and the pioneering Cuban jazz group Irakere.