Ceremony is a major new project, the fruit of pianist-composer Omar Sosa's first big-band collaboration with composer-arranger-cellist Jaques Morelenbaum, Hamburg's 18-piece NDR Bigband (North German Radio/Norddeutscher Rundfunk) and the Omar Sosa Quartet, featuring Julio Barreto (drums), Childo Tomas (electric bass), and Marcos Ilukán (Afro-Cuban percussion). Sosa himself plays piano and marimba. Recorded in two sessions (2007 and 2008) at NDR's Hamburg studios under the direction of Morelenbaum and Sosa, Ceremony features Morelenbaum's brilliant arrangements of selections from Omar's Spirit Of The Roots (1999), Bembón (2000), and Afreecanos (2009) It also acknowledges the majesty of the legendary Afro-Cuban big bands of Frank "Machito" Grillo, Chico O'Farrill and Dizzy Gillespie, while extending those revered traditions in a contemporary salute to the expansive universe of world jazz, wherein Sosa himself continues to reign as a joyous, generous, abundant, and essential creative spirit.
