"Though deeply schooled in jazz improvisational techniques, Sosa has always pushed beyond jazz orthodoxy. At his best, his art encompasses a remarkable range of influences: European symphonic repertoire, religious music of Gnawa, traditional sounds of Senegal and other far-flung idioms
have coursed through his work."

Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, April 2007

"Cuban pianist Omar Sosa enjoys a well-deserved reputation for following his own path. Where most of his compatriots attack every chorus with the urgent intensity of a dying man, he incorporates space and light into his virtuosic playing, which links him both to older Cuban forms and to the mysteries of postmodern jazz. And his ongoing interest in uniting musical traditions of Africa and the Middle East using Afro-Cuban rhythms as the glue has produced some seriously idiosyncratic stuff- 2002's Sentir is a wild ride featuring a Moroccan singer and an American rapper. For his new Afreecanos Quartet, he couldn't have found a more simpatico collaborator than Senegalese percussionist-vocalist Mola Sylla: now living in Amsterdam, Sylla collaborates regularly with new-music cellist Ernst Reijseger and has recorded with Tuvan and Sardinian throat singers. His hearty tenor and passionate delivery offer grand possibilities for this group, which also includes Mozambican bassist Childo Tomas and Cuban drummer Julio Barreto."

Neil Tesser, Chicago Reader, April 2007

"Sosa's music is the unifying sort, yoking together Africa and jazz and Latin America and hip-hop. He makes it work, being one of
those rare birds whose keyboard skills are near those
of Chick Corea or Chucho Valdés."

Ben Ratliff, New York Times

"Sosa's vision of contemporary jazz reaches across every imaginable boundary. By the time he had concluded, his unusual array of players and styles had convicingly proved his beliefs in musical eclecticism, in the joy of musical freedom and in his spiritual link with his musical predecessors."

Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times

"Sosa's pianisms evoke distant echoes of McCoy Tyner's power, Keith Jarrett's improvisational flights of fancy, and Thelonious Monk's angular harmonies, transforming the piano into 88 well-tuned drums"

Eugene Holley, The Village Voice

"Sosa's music is an exploration of African culture with a global perspective. In his pan-African/pan-Latin approach, Orisha music, hip-hop, rumba, jazz, and Gnawa ritual music are just different expressions of the same culture."

Fernando Gonzalez, DownBeat

"Sosa enlivened the mix of jazz, blues, and Afro-Caribbean rhythms with electronics, and he played the inside of the piano with brushes and other objects. Tempos were fluid and the mood changed freely. In the end, the performance was doubly exhilarating: Sosa took full advantage of Latin jazz's fun and funky grooves while adding experimental touches to keep listeners on their toes."

Ed Hazell, The Boston Phoenix

"Sosa is a deeply creative musician with an extraordinary harmonic sense. His piano playing is sui generis: it has obvious roots in Cuban music, but he's taken his approach to the keyboard into completely new regions."

John Adams, Composer

"Sosa moves from delicate, unabashedly romantic melodies to wild blasts of percussive noise in a manner that recalls the best of Keith Jarrett."

Joel Roberts, ALLABOUTJAZZ, April 2003

"Omar Sosa is a fusion artist in the best sense of the word.
The virtuosic pianist mixes his Cuban roots with tastes of bebop, free jazz, even hip-hop and electronica, into a strikingly fresh and spicy modern stew that's much more than the sum of its ingredients."

Joel Roberts, ALLABOUTJAZZ, April 2003

"Sosa is shaping a new synthesis of Latin and American jazz."

Philip Van Vleck, BILLBOARD, February 22, 2003

"A new phase in the jazz and Cuban music linkage is being unveiled by gifted pianist Omar Sosa. Previous blendings of the two genres have tended to emphasize the powerful energies of Afro-Cuban rhythms in combination with the harmonic structures and improvisational qualities of jazz. Sosa, however, has moved beyond the parallelism of musical elements into a kind of natural, organic expressiveness in which the music's separate identities are replaced by a seamless, creative mutuality."

Don Heckman, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 19, 2003

"Omar Sosa has all the traits necessary to become
one of the important figures in jazz."

Don Heckman, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 19, 2003

"Globalization might be an abstract concept for many, but for pianist, composer and arranger Omar Sosa it's a very real, personal matter. Born in Camagüey, Cuba, Sosa toured and recorded, early in his career, in places such as Angola, Congo, Ethiopia, Spain and Mexico. He has lived and worked in Quito, Ecuador, and San Francisco, California, and now has settled in Barcelona, Spain. Not surprisingly, his music is an exploration of African culture with a global perspective. In Sosa's pan-African/pan-Latin approach, Orisha music, hip-hop, rumba, Ecuadorian chants, jazz, and Gnawa ritual music are just different expressions of the same culture. In his music, concepts, instruments, grooves and textures from disparate traditions overlap, blend and collide with deceptive ease. The results are both fresh and illuminating."

Fernando Gonzalez, DOWN BEAT, May 2002

"Sosa's performance was an extraordinary example of state-of-the-art world jazz, splendidly illustrating how entrancing the music can become when it is open and receptive to global input and interaction."

Don Heckman, LOS ANGELES TIMES, April 18, 2002

"At the core of Sosa's music, there's the impulse to connect disparate sources, to explore old links, to make an ancient culture whole again by pushing it forward."

Fernando Gonzalez, THE WASHINGTON POST, March 13, 2002

"Although Cuba has produced more than its share of leonine jazz pianists, Sosa stands out among them, and not only because of the crystalline beauty of his touch and the nimbleness of his technique. A deeply spiritual player, Sosa more often than not puts his virtuosity aside to play the simplest, single-note melody or to linger over a radiant, chorale-like series of harmonies."

Howard Reich, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, March 11, 2002

"Sosa is a versatile pianist with a big sound, especially strong in the extreme registers, and his fast fingers dig into montunos and Herbie Hancock jazz chords."

Ben Ratliff, THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 15, 2002