His debut album as a leader ‘BBB: Barcelona, Bogotá, Boston’ (Armored Records, 2009) was recorded in Boston with a selected fine group of emergent jazz musicians in New York, and it was released and performed in important venues in Europe, Colombia and the US. The album was referred by the prestigious ‘All About Jazz’ as one of the “best 2010 jazz albums”.
He produces, arranges and plays the piano for the young Portuguese singer Luisa Sobral’s debut cd ‘The Cherry on my Cake’, which receives a Golden Disk Award at only 6 months of its release and conquers the top charts in many European countries. In 2012 he releases ‘Ar’ with another internationally acclaimed Portuguese singer, -Sofia Ribeiro-, with whom he has toured Europe and Latin America in several occasions, playing in renowned festivals and venues.
Among his most frequent collaborators are important musicians like Marta Gómez (Colombia/Barcelona), Lucia Pulido (Colombia/NewYork), Banda Magda (New York), Fonseca (Colombia), Kazuyo Kuriya’s Quartet (Japan) and Sylvie Bourban (Switzerland) among others, and he has performed in prestigious theatres such as the Lincoln Center (New York), the Carnegie Hall (New York), and jazz festivals in Europe, Latin America and Japan. His music has been interpreted by famous bands such as the Paquito D’Rivera Quintet, the UMO Jazz Orchestra (Finland), the Yukimori Big Band (Japan) and the Big Band de México, and some of his compositions have been requested for educational purposes by institutions such as Berklee College of Music (Boston), NEC (New England Conservatory) and UNT (University of North Texas).
He has been invited in two occasions to write and perform with the Bogotá Big Band, sharing stage with luminary Colombian musicians such as Edmar Castañeda, Lucia Pulido and Samuel Torres; he played the piano in the tribute to Mercedes Sosa (Lincoln Center, New York, April 2010), where he accompanied Joan Baez, León Gieco, Piero and Eva Ayllón among others; and he worked as an arranger for the 2007 Latin Grammys Ceremony. Currently he is writing new music for the project ‘Inténtalo Carito’ with his brother Nicolás Ospina (another important Colombian musician). The project became worldwide famous for their youtube hit song ‘Qué difícil es hablar el español’.
Juan Andrés started his musical studies at the Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá), and short time after he moved to Barcelona (Spain), where he continued his classical and jazz studies at the Escola D’Angel Soler and the Taller de Musics. In the year 2005 he receives a scholarship to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and graduated ‘Summa Cum Laude’ in 2007. At Berklee he studied with musicians such as Danilo Pérez, Maria Schneider, Greg Hopkins and Dave Samuels among many others, and he was a recipient of the ‘Jazz Herb Pomeroy Award’ and the ‘Herb Pomeroy Award’. He moved to New York City in 2008.
