Angelica Sanchez: Sparkle Beings

A famous philosopher once said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." This is something of a problem for a reviewer. If the music is stunning—unexpectedly so—then the logical thing is to simply write that. But then it is possible to end up end up well out of one's depth.

If the rhythm section is Billy Hart and Michael Formanek, well, things simply get better as you go on from there. Angelica Sanchez is a pianist of great depth and imagination and deserving of the superlatives that are sometimes carelessly tossed around in reviews. For anyone whose taste runs to both Ravel and Carl Ruggles, this recording may give cause for pause. In a good way. About matters of technique and the like it is best to defer to a pianist. But the recording overall is simply beautiful and will repay (and withstand) repeated listenings.

Some of Mary Lou Williams' later work may not be as familiar as, say "Roll Em," and really verges on the avant-garde. "A Fungus Amungus" is one of those things. Sánchez really stretches out, from the dissonant introduction to a sly swinging interlude of Hart and Formanek which somehow resonates with Wayne Shorter's "Witch Hunt" and then on to a repeated, choppy figure in an odd meter. "Generational Bonds" features Hart's subtle brushwork as the piano gently meanders along and eases into four— the shifting rhythms make sense as improvised. Sanchez does like repeated figures, but as stable anchors before she goes elsewhere, including a blues lick or two. "Sparkly Beings" almost opens with an audible sigh. It is music for seeing spirits, literally. It may be a tad ornate and mannered, but this is, after all, risk-taking, improvised music. Here Sánchez and Formanek start a figured trade into an open form and start pushing back into four once more, maybe halfway through. They end up there too. All part of the chase.

Do not be deceived. This is not some kind of lost-in-the-woods Mexican abstract music, references to the volcanos Popo and Izta ("A Sleeping Lady and the Giant that Watches Over Her")or "Preludios" notwithstanding. It is challenging modernist music, and superbly listenable as well.