When the Marta Sanchez Quintet performed at Manhattan’s 92NY on July 23, the pianist played no tunes from her latest trio album, Perpetual Void (Intakt Records, 2024). The group did play three numbers from her quintet record SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) (Whirlwind Recordings, 2022), but Sanchez was the only holdover from that session. Instead the set featured five new, unrecorded songs, with six musicians on neither of the two recent albums.
This new material was a reflection of her melodic fertility. Not only does she write an impressive number of pieces, but each one also boasts more than the two or three themes a typical jazz or pop song might.
“I’ve always loved melody, something you think is beautiful,” she says from her Brooklyn home five days later. “Even when the music gets intricate, it’s always important to have a melodic element that will touch your heart, but without being corny. You have to find a balance. If everything’s unexpected, it will sound random. And if everything’s expected, it’s boring.
“The same is true of conversation,” she adds. “If you talk about nuclear physics and I don’t understand a word, I won’t be able to follow it. But if you explain it in language that I know, I can get it. In painting, writing, every kind of art, it’s always a mixture of the intellectual and the instinctual, something that you can get right away and something that your brain has to work for.”
When the quintet played “The Eternal Stillness,” for example, it began with the two saxophonists (Greg Ward on alto, Jeremy Viner on tenor) playing a slow-hymn theme in unaccompanied close harmony until they diverged into a piping alto and a redolent tenor over drummer Savannah Harris’s brushes. Bassist Rick Rosato then took over the foreground with a solo that ran variations on yet another theme.
When Sanchez finally emerged from the background, she played what can best be described as a “one-person piano duet,” with her right hand playing sparkling, high arpeggios and her left hand playing a lower, slower processional.
“I like that you can play your own counter melody,” she continues, “one melody in the right hand and another in the left. Even saxophone players can develop two voices, like Coltrane playing high and low.”
Sanchez’s stage presence reinforced the music’s blend of the lovely and the demanding. She sat at the Steinway concert grand with the demeanor of a bandleader who would give her musicians plenty of room to play, while always remaining in charge of the journey’s destination — and of every stop along the way.
The quintet was supplemented by trumpeter Adam O’Farrill on two new songs: the exuberant march “Becoming” and the melancholy ballad “Underwater Search.” Sanchez has rarely written for brass and was clearly enjoying pitting the trumpet against the two saxophones that usually dominate her quintets.
“I like the tone of the saxophone,” she explains. “It has a warmer sound, a larger range and more flexibility. Two saxophones play together better because they share those same qualities. But I wrote some pieces for trumpet because it gives me a different texture to play with, and Adam is the best trumpet player I can think of in New York.”
Sanchez has lived in New York for 14 years. She was born and raised in Madrid, and it was there that she studied classical piano, learning how to recognize and articulate those captivating melodies. But she despaired of the fierce competition over the few performing opportunities for classical pianists. She envied her friends in pop bands who got to play with other people and for other people — not just at a semester-end recital, but all the time.
She wanted music that was more substantial than the rock and hip-hop her pals were playing. She found the answer when she took lessons from the Argentine pianist and composer Guillermo Klein in Barcelona. Here was someone who knew how to keep melodies changing over the course of a piece, and was eager to share that knowledge.
“I wanted to escape from the format where a band plays a theme, then everyone solos and then we play the melody again,” she recalls. “That doesn’t sound like a complete composition to me. I prefer something that evolves, where one section leads to something else, almost like a classical piece, that keeps evolving from the beginning to the end. I’m not the first one to do that: Many modern composers such as Guillermo, Henry Threadgill, Ambrose Akinmusire and John Hollenbeck are doing that. Improvisation is important, but composition is important too.”
In addition to leading her own quintet and trio (the latter will tour this fall), Sanchez is also the pianist in the David Murray Quartet, appearing on his last two albums: this year’s Birdly Serenade and last year’s Francesca. On these recordings one can hear a new aggression in Sanchez’s attack.
“I can’t describe how much I’ve learned from David,” Sanchez says. “He doesn’t have any fear; he really goes for it. He doesn’t want you to play correctly; he wants you to get out of the frame that the tune gives you and to play as fearlessly as he does. He doesn’t tell you this in words, but you know if you don’t stay with him, it’s not going to work.”
Three of the new songs that Sanchez unveiled at 92NY were songs with words: “I Picture You” and “The Hole” with soprano Emma Frank, and “He Moves” with tenor Vuyo Sotashe. These aren’t her first vehicles for singers but they reflect a growing commitment to that path.
“I haven’t recorded many of [the vocal numbers],” she says. “The timbre of the human voice is unlike anything else. I’m very slow at writing lyrics, so I find it’s easier to write lyrics first and then the music. I have something I want to say, and I try to make it grow with the music and not get in the way.”
Sanchez’s melodies are unfailingly attractive, but of course their impact changes with the harmonic movement underneath. When a romantic motif is placed over a melancholy chord, for example, the friction between the hope of the single-note line and the doubt of the three-note chord gives the piece its drama.
“The harmony is just as important,” she argues. “If you put a melody that’s beautiful but predictable over a harmony that’s darker and unexpected, the musical power shifts to the harmony. And that’s when the piece becomes interesting.” JT