artist info

SUBA Trio is the second recording and concert collaboration between 7-time GRAMMY-nominated pianist-composer-bandleader Omar Sosa and U.K.-based Senegalese kora master and singer Seckou Keita, featuring folkloric Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. The recording made NPR Music’s ’20 Best Albums of 2021’, reached #1 on the Transglobal World Music Chart (December 2021), and received a 4-star review in Downbeat, to mention just a few of hundreds of accolades. SUBA Trio‘s debut in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall in November 2021 was sold-out.

Both charismatic and virtuoso performers, Omar Sosa and Seckou Keita share a special musical chemistry that inspires audiences to their feet with a unique fusion of jazz and world music. Each concert is an uplifting experience, reflecting the close and compassionate listening of artists engaged in a captivating musical conversation. London’s Morning Star newspaper writes, “The unhurried elegance of what Sosa calls ‘minimalismo’ articulates this utterly modern musical idiom”. And London’s Jazz Journal comments that SUBA is “suffused with the soulful spirit of song – music of archetypal vision and deeply heartening consequence.” In the U.S., Jazz Weekly writes that SUBA “sounds like a serene sunset in the Sahel desert, with sparkling stars, spacious horizons, and wondrous panoramas.” And Downbeat describes the “otherwise impossible-to-categorize music as oceanic, bridging the Atlantic from Cuba to Senegal”, and offering “a genuine ‘world music’”. Rounding out the Trio is the wonderful percussionist, Gustavo Ovalles, whose exceptional mastery of the maracas, quitiplas, and culo ‘e puya is truly remarkable.