{"id":198636,"date":"2026-03-01T00:15:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T00:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/198636\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T00:15:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T00:15:06","slug":"revered-cuban-pianist-omar-sosa-back-in-bay-area-for-week-full-of-gigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/198636\/","title":{"rendered":"Revered Cuban pianist Omar Sosa back in Bay Area for week full of gigs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cuban pianist Omar Sosa<\/a> arrived in the Bay Area in 1995<\/a> by way of Ecuador with a few dollars in his pocket and not a single musical contact.<\/a> Unknown in the U.S., he was an outlier even back home in Havana, where his path to the piano ran through his training as a percussionist.<\/p>\n

Next week, Sosa returns to the Bay Area for his debut run as a resident artistic director at the SFJAZZ Center<\/a> March 5-8, a sweet triumph for the ever-evolving bandleader. Featuring a different project each night, the residency opens Thursday with the Stanford Jazz Orchestra backing Sosa for the world premiere of Brazilian cellist Jaques Morelenbaum\u2019s arrangements from \u201cEs:sensual,\u201d the pianist\u2019s acclaimed 2018 album with Germany\u2019s NDR Bigband.<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s lived in Europe since 1999, the seven-time Grammy Award nominee put down deep roots during his five-year stint here, spent mostly in Oakland. Now living in southern Italy, Sosa\u2019s played dozens of Bay Area gigs over the quarter century since he left, but has never before had the opportunity to present such a wide spectrum of his music.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really special,\u201d Sosa said in a recent conversation while taking a break from working at producer Greg Landau\u2019s studio in Alameda. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful to SFJAZZ for making me a resident artistic director.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview that covered some three decades of Sosa\u2019s music and career, he recalled how quickly he found his footing in the Bay Area. A friend of his ex-wife, videographer Jeffrey Braverman, was putting him up, and on Sosa\u2019s first night in San Francisco he took the pianist to the Mission District jazzspot Bruno\u2019s, where Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers were playing. Braverman let them know there was a Cuban pianist at the bar and they invited him to sit in.<\/p>\n

Sosa wasn\u2019t well-versed in American standards, and the band tried to accommodate by calling a tune from the Caribbean neighborhood, Sonny Rollins\u2019 calypso-inflected \u201cSt. Thomas.\u201d He made his way through and at the end, \u201cSomebody in the band says, \u2018You can play!\u2019\u201d Sosa recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cA guy at the bar called me over and said \u2018I have some connections in the Latin universe that I can put you in contact with.\u2019 I said, \u2018I just arrived yesterday, please!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sosa can\u2019t recall the man\u2019s name, but he gave him the numbers of Cuban vocalist Fito Reinoso, Uruguayan percussionist Edgardo Cambon, and Mission-born Santana percussionist Karl Perazzo, who were all leading popular Latin dance bands. He called Reinoso first, and by the end of the week he was playing his first gig at Pier 23.<\/p>\n

\u201cFito fueled my desire to be part of something, to integrate myself into the community,\u201d Sosa said. \u201cIt was a great band, with Jesus Diaz on percussion, Rahsaan Fredericks on bass, Anthony Blea on violin sometimes, and Fito singing, the Benny Mor\u00e9 of the Bay Area. Everything started there. There weren\u2019t that that many Cuban musicians then. Word spread around.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time he left for Spain in 1999, Sosa had fully embraced an aesthetic of accumulation, gathering artists from far-flung traditions under the umbrella of his Cuban rhythmic matrix.\u00a0Distilling this approach to its essence\u00a0his Suba Trio\u00a0featuring\u00a0Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles and Senegalese kora master Seckou Keita\u00a0closes the residency March 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the first Cuban music who opened the door to other influences, mixing our tradition with Indian, West African and Middle Eastern musicians, whatever traditions he feels drawn to,\u201d said Cuban violinist and vocalist Yilian Ca\u00f1izares, who performs with Sosa\u2019s Aguas Trio at Kuumbwa Monday, March 2 and SFJAZZ Friday, March 6.<\/p>\n

Combining a very different set of ingredients,\u00a0his Quarteto\u00a0Americanos, featuring Cuban bassist Ernesto Mazar Kindel\u00e1n and two of Sosa\u2019s earliest East Bay collaborators, saxophonist Sheldon Brown and drummer Josh Jones, plays March 7.<\/p>\n

Long based in Switzerland, Ca\u00f1izares said she\u2019d been influenced by Sosa long before she met him.\u00a0Hailing from different generations, they forged a spiritually charged duo before adding\u00a0Gustavo Ovalles into the mix, which seamlessly combines folkloric Afro-Cuban cadences, contemporary jazz harmonies, \u201cand Afro-futuristic classical influences,\u201d Sosa said.<\/p>\n

The group made its Bay Area debut at Yoshi\u2019s in early March, 2020, and the mesmerizing performance seemed to be launching Ca\u00f1izares\u2019s North American career. But with the pandemic it took five years for her to make it back to the Bay Area, joining John Santos as a special guest at the Stanford Jazz Festival last summer. And now she\u2019s poised for a breakout year (including a run of high-profile Bay Area gigs with her own band in July).<\/p>\n

The name Aguas Trio resonates on several level, Ca\u00f1izares explained, from Cuba\u2019s geographic reality as an island to her devotion to Oshun, the Yoruba goddess associated with fresh water.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also related to the fluidity we want to have with this project,\u201d she said. \u201cWe never play the same. Aguas is literally going with the flow. This is what makes this project so unique and timeless and fun. Of course we have some melodies and rhythms and we know where we start, but we never know precisely where we\u2019re heading.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact Andrew Gilbert at\u00a0jazzscribe@aol.com.<\/p>\n

OMAR SOSA<\/p>\n

Aguas Trio:\u00a07 p.m. March 2 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $58.28-$63; www.kuumbwajazz.org<\/p>\n

SFJAZZ residency:\u00a07:30 p.m. March 5-7, 7 p.m. March 8 at SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco; $39; www.sfjazz.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cuban pianist Omar Sosa arrived in the Bay Area in 1995 by way of Ecuador with a few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[967,12853,181,971,330,101,103,102,104,106,105,420],"class_list":{"0":"post-198636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jazz","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","15":"tag-san-francisco-news","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-headlines","18":"tag-sf-news","19":"tag-things-to-do"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}