Album Notes
“Powerful yet invisible, momentarily ferocious yet leaving behind idyllic, crystal clear skies; the Tramontana is a true force of nature, a gale force wind that lashes Spain’s Catalan coastline. It serves as an apt inspiration for composer and bandleader Juan Andrés Ospina, who has experienced its strength and beauty firsthand and has translated the wind’s stirring and awe-invoking qualities into music for Tramontana, the debut release by his phenomenal big band. Soul-stirring and vigorous, a family affair as well as a multinational congregation, the Juan Andrés Ospina Big Band embodies the contradictory essence of this formidable natural phenomenon.
Due out April 20, 2018 Tramontana is the extraordinary fulfillment of nearly a decade of dreaming and a lifetime’s immersion in music. Born into a musical and artistic family in Bogotá, Colombia, Ospina chanced into his gift for big band composing and arranging while a student at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. The album’s realization follows a successful, inventive Kickstarter campaign and the enthusiastic encouragement of renowned bandleaders Paquito D’Rivera and Maria Schneider. It brings together a gifted ensemble of artists of ten different nationalities, performing Ospina’s striking originals, one radically transformed standard, and a passionate song by Colombian singer Lucia Pulido.”
