"Omar Sosa's 88 Well-Tuned Drums" - RIIFF 2022 SCREENING

OMAR SOSA'S 88 WELL-TUNED DRUMS is a feature-length documentary film on the life and music of Cuba-born pianist and composer, Omar Sosa (b. 1965). Multiple Grammy-nominee 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 sound—with a Latin jazz heart.

Extensive interviews with Omar Sosa, archival video and stills, and, of course, a lot of music form the backbone of the film, with animated segments bringing bold and colorful movement to Sosa’s stories, especially early ones for which there is no supporting material. The film traces Sosa’s artistic origins from his birth and childhood in Camagüey, Cuba’s third-largest city, conservatory education at the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Música in Havana, military service in Angola during that country’s long civil war, and eventual relocation to Ecuador where, for a time, he wrote, arranged, and performed commercial jingles. Sosa’s story continues with a fateful mid-90s move to the U.S., a stint as a sought-after sideman in the Bay Area’s burgeoning Latin jazz scene, and partnership with longtime manager Scott Price that continues to this day. In his 25+ years as a solo artist, Omar Sosa has released over 30 albums and received four Grammy nominations and three Latin Grammy nominations. Often performing as many as 100 concerts across six continents annually, Sosa is known for a rhythmic style and musical influences and collaborators as diverse as his travel itinerary. As Eugene Holley writes in a 2004 Village Voice piece that inspired the film’s title, “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.”

Director Biography - Soren Sorensen

Soren Sorensen is an award-winning filmmaker specializing in documentary film and television with an emphasis on social and cultural issues. His first feature-length documentary, MY FATHER'S VIETNAM (2016), combines interviews and never-before-seen photographs and 8mm footage of the era, to tell the story of three soldiers, only one of whom returned home from the Vietnam War alive. The film premiered at the 2015 Rhode Island International Film Festival, where it won the Soldiers and Sacrifice Grand Prize. MY FATHER'S VIETNAM is currently available on streaming video-on-demand platforms, and on Blu-ray and DVD.

Sorensen followed MY FATHER'S VIETNAM with the short documentary, WITH DAD. Based on the book of the same name by photographer and Clark University Studio Art professor Stephen DiRado, WITH DAD features DiRado’s still photography, specifically during the painful 20-year period of his father’s decline and eventual death from Alzheimer’s disease. The film premiered at the 2020 Rhode Island International Film Festival, where it won the Youth Jury First Prize for Best Short Documentary. The film also won awards in 2020 at the Houston International Film Festival, the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, and the Mystic Film Festival. In 2021, WITH DAD won two awards, for Best Short Documentary and Best Editing, at the Red Dirt Film Festival in Stillwater, OK and won Best Short Documentary at the NYC Independent Film Festival. WITH DAD had its broadcast premiere in September of 2021 on WGBH.

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