Omar Sosa [CUBA] & Seckou Keita SUBA Trio [2 shows] // Berkeley
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.
2 shows! Friday, Jan 17th and Saturday, Jan. 18th 2025
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
The Freight
2020 Addison Street
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 644-2020
info@thefreight.org
Video:
About show:
The Atlantic Ocean separates Cuba and Senegal, the respective birthplaces of piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and kora maestro Seckou Keita, a distance diminished by their shared ancestral connection to Africa. When the pair met in 2012, Seckou loved Omar for his musical spirituality, whilst Omar saw in Seckou a rare ability to collaborate but not lose his identity. Their debut album Transparent Water (2017) was hailed as ‘beautiful, rhapsodic… spiritual’ (Songlines) and ‘mesmerizing, evocative and sophisticated’ (World Music Central).
Sosa has released over 30 albums during an incredible career that has included nominations for seven GRAMMY or Latin GRAMMY awards; Keita is a multi-award winner, most recently as the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year (2019). Recorded during lockdown and released in October 2021, Sosa and Keita’s second album SUBA is a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of compassion and real change in a post-pandemic world, a visceral reiteration of humanity’s perennial prayer for peace and unity. Joining Omar and Seckou in the studio and for live performances is the inimitable Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles.
Video 2:
