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Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita | SUBA Trio
April 1, 2022 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT
Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita | SUBA Trio featuring percussionist Gustavo Ovalles are coming to the Sanctuary for the CD release of SUBA Trio, presented in cooperation with The Egg Performing Arts Center.
Through the music we bring a message of peace, hope and unity. When everything around us falling apart, the one thing we have inside ourselves is a divine connection with our inner voice.
Omar Sosa
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 ‘mesmerising, 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.
Six-time GRAMMY-nominated 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. Mr. Sosa’s latest recording, Calma, reached the Billboard charts in February 2011, and his previous CD, Ceremony, receive an ECHO Jazz Award in Germany in June 2011 His recent CD, Afreecanos, explores the African roots of traditional musics throughout the Diaspora, using modern jazz harmonies and the latest audio technology. The Afreecanos ensemble fuses the folkloric with the contemporary, the ancestral with the urban. Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune recently commented that “Cuban pianists often tower over their peers. But within this elite class of pianists, few have been more stylistically adventurous than Omar Sosa. Though deeply schooled in jazz improvisation techniques, Sosa always has pushed beyond jazz orthodoxy. https://omarsosa.com
Seckou Keita has arguably become the most influential and inspiring Kora player of his generation, an exceptional and charismatic musician and a modern global citizen, with seven centuries of tradition and heritage expressed through his music. Described as a ‘griot (praise singer), composer, djembe master, virtuoso and pioneer’, Seckou Keita is a rare type of musician, seated in tradition whilst constantly pushing the boundaries of his art. A true master of the kora – a 22 stringed West African harp – Seckou, from the Casamance art of the ancient kingdom of Gabou in Southern Senegal, was a childhood prodigy, born of a line of griots and kings. Cissokho, his mother’s family name, gave life to his talent; Keita, his father’s, gave him royal blood. Seckou has graced the international stage since 1996, earning worldwide acclaim for his kora playing; appearing with a host of respected artists of artists including Salif Keita, Paul Weller, Bassekou Kouyate, Damon Albarn… https://www.seckoukeita.com
Concert photos at The Sanctuary for Independent Media on April 1, 2022, by Sina Basila Hickey.
Also see Rudy Lu’s photos for Nippertown
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