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Afro-Cuban jazz pianist Omar Sosa will perform Saturday at Royce Hall with rapper Will Power. Rec

Talking on his manager’s cell phone from somewhere in Washington, D.C., at noon last Saturday, Afro-Cuban jazz pianist and composer Omar Sosa sounded tired. His voice, worn out and husky with a heavy Cuban accent, made it hard to decipher what he was saying at times.

Sosa, who tours nine months of the year, was in D.C. to kick off his week-long North American tour, which comes to Royce Hall on Saturday. He will be joined in his UCLA Live performance by rapper Will Power.

Like any touring jazz artist, the Cuban musician lives for performing live. He sees each performance as both his first and last. He is known for making audience members want to cry with his introspective ballads and want to dance to his upbeat Afro-Cuban grooves.

But touring comes at a cost. Asked where he was performing that night, Sosa let out a huge sigh.

“Ooph! Where I am performing ... let me look (at) the (date) book,” he said. “Most of the time, I don’t know. We (are playing) in Washington, Lisner Auditorium.”

When asked in which countries he’s toured with Power, Sosa sounded similarly overwhelmed.

“Japan, Europe, Morocco, Tunisia ...” he said.

While his rigorous touring schedule may make Sosa, 40, sound older than he actually is, Power calls him “a tireless cat” whose forte is the stage.

“He’s an incredibly powerful, beautiful, ingenious performer,” Power said. “He doesn’t hold anything back. He’s like complete, pure love on stage. And it’s rare that you see any jazz musicians like that anymore because they’re so reserved. Whatever the spirit tells him to do, he’ll do it. We’ve brought children up on stage.”

Music has been Sosa’s life since early childhood in Camaguey, Cuba, when his father used to play vinyl records for the family on Sunday afternoons. He still vividly remembers hearing Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa.”

Now a father himself, touring has gotten harder for Sosa in the past few years because of the time away from his family. He strongly believes in separating his personal life and professional life, so his 3-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter stay at home while he tours.

Despite the downsides, it seems 32 years of hard work and musicianship have paid off with the success of his 2002 album “Sentir,” which garnered nominations for both a Latin Grammy and a Best Latin Jazz Album Grammy.

More recently, Sosa received a nomination for Latin Jazz Album of the Year from the 2005 Jazz Journalists Association Awards for his album “Mulatos,” on which he fuses Afro-Cuban rhythms, the harmonic structures, and improvisation of jazz, and Middle Eastern scales.

Guest stars include Cuban jazz clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, along with a tabla player and a player of the oud, an Arabic lute.

Sosa blends the music of various cultures into the same piece. On the composition “Reposo,” for instance, one can hear the influence of modern classical composer Erik Satie in Sosa’s piano with Middle Eastern-sounding phrases and the fullness that space can provide in music.

The greatest musical influence on Sosa, however, seems to be Thelonious Monk, who also shared Satie’s musical preference for concision, dissonance and eccentricity. Sosa’s son Lonious is named after the revolutionary but enigmatic jazz artist, who Sosa calls “my guru.”

Beyond any individual musician or genre, Sosa is fueled by spirituality. Sosa is a practitioner of Santeria, a religion created by West African slaves in the Caribbean that heavily emphasizes the spiritual qualities of music.

Sosa has incorporated the ritual trance music of Yoruba, a West African people whose religion is an ancestor of Santeria, into some of his compositions.

Although Sosa has reached a new height in his career in the last several years, he doesn’t seem to be too concerned with the idea of success. He likes to focus simply on the spiritual and the present – which for now is his latest tour.

“Try to be alive – this is the goal that we need to fight for,” Sosa said. “Without that, there’s nothing we can do with the material. The only goal we can have is be alive and try to express what the spirits ask.”