![]() ![]() “If You Could Create It” strikes a lighter tone, with cascading torrents of tenor sax sound, before “The Hard Balance” offers reflection, both musically and personally – the track is finely balanced on an intricate polyrhythm, that reflects the difficulties of maintaining a work-life balance. “I loved my mum but it was really hard to tell her the deep things.” “I tell her things I could never tell her,” says Sanchez of the lyrics. Then something very different comes along – “Marivi,” featuring Ambrose Akinmusire and Camila Meza, offers a warm tribute to Sanchez’s mother, who died during lockdown. SAAM cuts through that smoothness, in a jagged, Schoenberg-inspired outburst full of intense feelings and dense clusters, built around an essential pain.Ī different form of pain features in ‘The Eternal Stillness” – mournful sighs and cries emanate from the saxophones, as layered textures shift underneath. These weak parts of myself even though I’ve been dealing with them for a long time, they’re still there.” Similarly reflective is “Dear Worthiness,” a “sad ballad that reflects on my self worth” – it features lithely beautiful melodies, but melancholy is never far away. The coloristic, texturally driven opener ‘The Unconquerable Areas’ describes parts of herself “that are still vulnerable. Most of the album draws on those precisely realized emotions. I was reflecting super deeply on what’s important, and how to achieve a meaningful life.” “Those compositions express all the phases I was going through at that time. ![]() The pieces took shape in lockdown, as Sanchez exchanged fortnightly composition tasks with a pen-pal. SAAM riffs on the Smithsonian American Art Museum in an album that’s an exhibition of Sanchez’s life in musical form: “It’s made up of all the elements of society from both countries that impact my life and make me who I am.” Matters internal and external are realized in musical expositions of complex feelings. ![]() A talented cast realizes her knotty, technical writing – frontline partners Alex Lore and Roman Filiu meet Sanchez, Rashaan Carter and Allan Mednard on backline duties. Following three critically acclaimed quintet releases, the Madrid-born pianist-composer presents SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) on Whirlwind Recordings, an album driven by emotional candour and boundary-pushing compositions. Marta Sanchez’s creative voice is strikingly original – circling rhythms, elaborate forms and criss-crossing counterpoint distinguishes her sonic signature on the crowded New York contemporary music scene. ![]()
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