Cuban-born pianist Axel Tosca is a dynamic performer known for his genre-bending mix of Jazz, Latin, and Timba music. Born in Cuba in 1983, Tosca grew up in a prestigious musical family. His mother is renowned Trova singer Xiomara Laugart and his father is folk singer-guitarist Alberto Tosca. Introduced to guitar at age four, Tosca was also playing piano by age seven and soon joined his parents on-stage playing his first show at Casa de las Americas. One of his teachers in music school was Miriam Valdez, the daughter of Cuban piano legends Bebo Valdez and sister of Chucho Valdez. With this first-class education, it enabled him to gain a wide range of experience playing with groups like Dennis & Swing, the Afro-Cuban All-Stars, Bobby Carcases, Teresa Garcia Caturla, Jose Miguel Crego, and more. He also discovered hip-hop and played with The Roots when they toured Cuba. While in Cuba Tosca won multiple piano competitions before moving to the United States in 2005 as part of the Havana Nights revue that played for two years at the world-famous Stardust Casino and Resort, in Las Vegas. Thereafter, he enrolled in jazz at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Now based in New York, he has earned plaudits playing in clubs as a solo artist as well as with (U)nity, a richly cross-pollinated jazz band in which he is a founding member.
In 2016, he released his debut album, the eponymous Axel Tosca. Included were guest appearances by his Mother, vocalist Xiomara Laugart, trumpeter Keyon Harold, saxophonist Ron Blake, drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, bassist James Genus, percussionist Luisito Quintero, and others. In 2019 Tosca, a former founding member of (U)nity, performed to a sold-out audience at Tokyo’s Blue Note.
Tosca has worked with George Clinton, BeBe Winans, The Clark Sisters, DJ / Producer / Remixer’s Louie Vega and David Morales, Stretch & Bobbito, Mae-Sun, Steve Gadd, Ray Chew, Lenny White, Pino Palladino, Giovanni Hidalgo, Jocelyn Brown, Karren Wheeler, Monique Bingham, Godwin Lewis and J Balvin and Bad Bunny.