About
Award-winning composer Jorge Sosa Ortega's music has been performed hundreds of times around the world - from New Zealand to Iran - and consistently to great acclaim. He has won a great many awards, including five NEA grants, an Opera America IDEA Grant amongst other accolades. His works have received rave reviews from major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Opera News, and Boston Globe.
A self-described musical chameleon, Jorge has vast experience writing in a wide variety of genres, including for film, opera, concert works, theatrical music, neoclassical works, experimental electronica, pop, rock, traditional Latinx and interactive projects. A multi-instrumentalist, he has a penchant for old synths as well as indigenous instruments.
As a film composer, Jorge has worked with an impressive array of international directors, all award-winning, including Adrian Pallares (MX), Mauricio Donoso (USA), Emmanuel Fabiyi (UK), and Olaf Rudolfsen (Norway). He won Best Original Score at the Vesuvius International Film Festival for his work on the film Acceptance. Many of these collaborations have resulted in films with high honors, most especially for De Familia, which stars the well-known Mexican actress, Arcelia Ramirez.
His operas feature cutting-edge topics such as Mexico's drug traffic crisis, on the revocation of DACA, and on the pandemic. I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams has been performed multiple times throughout the United States and México. Alice in the Pandemic, written during lockdown, is a groundbreaking work that features synchronized remote singers, animation, and motion capture, and has the special distinction of being archived in the Library of Congress as part of their Pandemic Response Collection. His Generación Perdida is on the human rights crisis in Mexico, and is slated to premiere at La Mama in New York in July 2025.
Jorge holds multiple degrees, culminating in a doctorate in composition and electronic music from the University of Missouri Kansas City. Originally from Mexico City, at present Jorge lives in New York City, and teaches composition at Molloy University.
Work Samples
Press
"Sosa’s composition is well-balanced to the story’s narrative, and his vocal writing aroused strong emotional peaks and valleys, magnified by the characters’ impassioned performances. "
— Kevin Baldwin, I Care if You Listen Review of "I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams"
"Sosa’s score was agile and entertaining, as befits such a journey. High points included the seductive slow number sung by Hilaire as Mara in her guise as a hostess in a technicolor housecoat, a chilling sequence featuring Lopez as Sha’s humanity is tested, and a crackling vocal duel between Guan Yin and Mara"
— A.Z. Madonna, Boston Globe Review of “Monkey”
"The electronically produced high-pitched screeches Sosa orchestrates serve as a dictator of Beltran’s madness and gives us the feeling that her cold prison cell bars are not only screaming, but bending and twisting their way towards her"
— Evan McCormack, Opera Pulse Review of "La Reina"
"Romantic symphonic music of tragedy and loss is evoked without compromising the twenty-first century edge of industrialized brutality"
— Jean Ballard, Theater Scene.net, Review of "Elegy for the Victims of Gun Violence"
"The boldest choices on Tárogató Constructions are to be found on Lamneck and Jorge Sosa’s Enchantment, in which Lamneck sounds her most relaxed amid Sosa’s intriguing and deftly painted landscape."
— “Enchantment” review by Colin Holter in I Care If You Listen
"Sosa’s music, conducted by Maria Sensi Sellner, flowed naturally with the rhythms of speech; in one gorgeous duet early in the opera, the two main characters reminisce on the divergent lessons their mothers gave them about how to behave in their new country.”
— Zoë Madonna, The Boston Globe Review of "I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams"
"Jorge Sosa's score is rapturous...As an evening's entertainment, this should not be missed...As an experiment in digital performance, this should not be ignored"
— Andrew Child, Broadway World, Review
"Composer Sosa’s broad stylistic palette incorporated lyrical impassioned melodies, kooky carnival music, and efficient recitative"
— Joanne Sydney Lessner, Opera News
"Jorge is a wonderful, extremely romantic composer, with a great sense of fantasy and imagination. His music blends traditional Mexican folk sounds with an almost Puccini-like lyricism"
— David Alan Miller, Artistic Director Albany Symphony, Little Orchestra Society, Published in Broadway World 2020
"Dreamlike and sometimes even nightmarish music"
— Ruth Renée Reif, Crescendo Magazine, Review of "Enchantment”
Upcoming
Performances
22 March 2025
8:00 p.m. EST
& live YouTube broadcast
“Maori Lament”
Chamber Ensemble
Juventas New Music Ensemble, Multicultural Arts Center,
East Cambridge, MA
May 2025
date and time to follow
“I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams”
Opera, Mexican Premiere
Libretto by Cerise Jacobs
Escenia Ensemble, Mexico City, Mexico
28 June 2025
2:00 p.m. EST &
7:00 p.m. EST
18 July 2025
7:30 p.m. EST
October 2025
date and time to follow
11 October 2025
time to follow
“To The People Like Us”
Opera, World Premiere
Libretto by Students from 826 Boston, White Snakes Projects
The Strand Theater, Boston, MA
“Generación Perdida”
Opera, World Premiere
Based on the book by Javier Moro Hernandez (Ediciones Periféricas)Teatro Grattacielo, The Downstairs Theater, La MaMa, Creative Shares.
66 East 4th Street, New York, NY
“Generación Perdida”
Mexican Premiere
Based on the book by Javier Moro Hernandez (Ediciones Periféricas)
Escenia Ensemble, Mexico City, Mexico
“Generación Perdida”
Based on the book by Javier Moro Hernandez (Ediciones Periféricas)
Teatro Grattacielo
Opera at Gotham Park, New York, NY