Omar Sosa, Cuba's maverick jazz pianist, has broken much new ground over the years. His tenth international release is an exhilarating duo concert recorded in Japan with percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. Sosa plays acoustic piano with electrifying force and energy, like a man possessed, and that may literally be the case, as the song titles and music here are replete with references to the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion. The opening track "Black Reflection" starts with a brief incantation and a few gentle chords that nudge Ovalles into soft, brush-played swing. The mood intensifies quickly, breaking the swing barrier with surging block chords, and swells of rhythm that arrive at a dizzying crescendo.
Sosa's adventurous adaptation of Afro-Cuban rhythms on piano brings to mind the work of Cuban guitarist Jose Angel Navarro, but whereas Navarro created semi-classical explorations of sacred Cuban rhythms, Sosa mediates them through the language of jazz, ultimately a more natural fit. The rhythmic character of Sosa's playing is overwhelming. "Una Tradicion Negra" is typical, exploding into lashing, 12/8 cycles backed by the woody click and scrape of Ovalles on traditional stick and gourd percussion. There are moments of lyricism, as on "Dias de Iyawo," where Sosa starts out with a gush of sweetness, but the melancholy and romanticism here maintain the rhythmic sharpness of his more aggressive playing, suggesting restraint, but also volcanic possibilities just around the corner. Sure enough, six minutes into the track, Sosa is flying and pounding, like Keith Jarrett on a tear.
"Eleggua in the Road" opens with deep drumming, and the piano sticking to a limited vocabulary of notes. From its trancey opening, the song builds inexorably into rhythmic overdrive, with chord clusters, and densely knotted riffs creating a churning sea of sound. Throughout, Sosa uses a digital delay that repeats his every note first on the left, and then on the right. It's a device, perhaps a little too clever, but employed masterfully as Sosa constructs rich, rhythmic mosaics. The final piece, "My Three Notes," opens with relaxed, even exhausted, languor. After all these exertions, one longs for Sosa to linger there, but madman that he is, he can't for long, and the piece grows lush and agitated by the end, another manifestation of a brilliantly restless spirit.
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Omar Sosa, Cuba's maverick jazz pianist, has broken much new ground over the years. His tenth international release is an exhilarating duo concert recorded in Japan with percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. Sosa plays acoustic piano with electrifying force and energy, like a man possessed, and that may literally be the case, as the song titles and music here are replete with references to the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion. The opening track "Black Reflection" starts with a brief incantation and a few gentle chords that nudge Ovalles into soft, brush-played swing. The mood intensifies quickly, breaking the swing barrier with surging block chords, and swells of rhythm that arrive at a dizzying crescendo.
