Patricia Brennan’s latest album as a leader, Breaking Stretch, was released on Pyroclastic Records in September 2024 and features the artist for the first time leading a septet. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and get the album from Amazon.com, Amazon.de.
The Patricia Brennan Septet: Patricia Brennan on vibraphone with electronics, marimba; Jon Irabagon on alto and sopranino saxophones; Mark Shim on tenor saxophone; Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, with electronics on tracks 1, 3, 9; Marcus Gilmore on drums; Mauricio Herrera on percussion; Kim Cass on bass.
In the detailed, useful liner notes to Breaking Stretch, Patricia Brennan writes that she seeks to create depth through the exploration of density and shifting rhythmic layers, by using orchestral techniques that create broadness: depth through width, width through depth.
The album Breaking Stretch contains original material written by Patricia Brennan, which offers space for improvisations. The harmonic resonance gives the illusion of a larger-than-seven sound. The composer writes that this record continues her journey of inner search and exploration. The album title distills this inspiration. The word “breaking” refers to pushing the sonic and technical limits of each instrument to a breaking point, past the normal expectations for the role of the instruments within the ensemble. In mathematics, the term “stretch” is a function that makes a graph narrower or wider. Patricia Brennan explains that, through different methods of expansion and contraction, she seeks to make the music mile-wide and simultaneously mine-deep. Her compositions trigger tension and unify opposites: broadness and depth, rupture and flexibility, breaking and stretching.
The first track, “Los Otros Yo” (“The Other Selves”), is the furious prelude to an exciting album. Patricia Brennan writes that this composition represents our connection to our multiple or “other” selves from past, present and future. She talks about the parallelisms offered by the physical self, the emotional self and the spiritual self. Melodic lines co-exist in parallel, but at different rhythmic rates. The soca-inspired vibe invites the celebration of our true self.
The second track, “Breaking Stretch”, comes with a rough beginning, offering friction. The longer the piece lasts, the more pleasant the sound becomes. Patricia Brennan notes that the rhythmic structure of this composition juxtaposes binary and ternary rhythmic feels, creating the illusion of constriction and dilation coexisting within the same space and at the same time.
For me, the beginning of the third track, “555”, has an almost mystical, enchanted touch. The composer writes that the number five is associated with her Zodiac sign, Virgo, and that Virgos tend toward analysis and exactitude. I would like to stress that astrology is a pseudo-science. She also remarks that the number five, particularly when repeated, also suggests change and opportunity. The composition “555” represents the pursuit of balance between known specificity and unknown freedom. According to the artist, it shows how flexibility, movement and action can unfold in exact and exacting spaces. In the composition, these spaces are divided into micro and macro groups of five elements. These groups exist within measures of three beats, each beat divided by five.
The rhythmic structure of the fourth track, “Palo de Oros” (“Suit of Coins”), was inspired by a card game Patricia Brennan used to play with her grandmother: the suit of gold coins, also known as pentacles. time signature of ten beats, each of sixteenth- note value, with the division of the measures and phrases divided into micro and macro groups of five beats. After a quiet start, an almost orgiastic, intoxicating sound follows.
Track number five, “Sueños de Coral Azul” (“Blue Coral Dreams”), was inspired by August 21, 2024. That day marks the twentieth anniversary of Patricia Brennan’s immigration to the United States. She calls this composition an ode to an immigrant’s journey: the uncertainty, the excitement for a fresh start, the pain of leaving loved ones behind, the hopes for new relationships, the dream of one day reuniting with the people from the place you once loved and called home. It is a nostalgic, thoughtful tune.
Track number 6, “Five Suns”, deals with the Aztecs’ concept of creation, chaos and destruction. They believed that the world has undergone five stages of creation and destruction, hence five suns. According to this legend, we are now living under the fifth sun, Tonatiuh. Each stage marks a period of stability that abruptly ends with upheaval and destruction. Patricia Brennan writes that the core of this composititon is a repeated form that is disrupted every cycle, the disruptions becoming more and more pronounced, until they reach a point of frenzy.
The calm track number 7, “Mudanza” (“States of Change”), was inspired by the homonymous poem by Mexican poet and Veracruz native Salvador Díaz Mirón. It is a nostalgic reflection on the joyful pleasures of yesterday, while acknowledging the pain and challenge of the present. Patricia Brennan underlines the drumless, orchestral approach, moving from a gentle marimba solo to the gradual darkness of the full ensemble’s chordal resonance.
The extremely lively track number 8, “Manufacturers Trust Company Building”, is in stark contrast to the previous tune. It is inspired by New York’s Fifth Avenue sculpture “Golden Arbor” by Harry Bertoia, a 16-foot high, 70-foot long, 5.25 ton screen of 800 bronze, copper and nickel panels welded together. The composition honors the size, the weight and the profundity of the sculpture with its plethora of shapes, textures and tones, which Patricia Brennan translated into music.
The 9th and last tune on the album Breaking Stretch takes its name and feeling from Earendel, the oldest and most distant star discovered. The name derives from the old English word meaning “morning star” or “rising light”. Patricia Brennan writes that this composition begins and ends over a pulsing, fading heartbeat, which represents the beginning and end of matter, including Earendel itself as it journeys away from us. “Earendel” is the septet’s exploration of the concept of constant expansion, the elasticity of the universe, and our never-ending travel through space into infinity. Spherical sounds take us to distant worlds.
I wished all musicians were able to compose such visionary music and explain it in comprehensive liner notes like Patricia Brennan.
Patricia Brennan Septet: Breaking Stretch, Pyroclastic Records, September 2024. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and get the album from Amazon.com, Amazon.de.
Vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan. Photograph copyright: Frank Heath.
The Veracruz (Mexico) born vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan started with music at the tender age of 4, playing latin percussion along salsa records with her father and listening to Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin records with her mother. Around the same age, she started playing the piano, influenced by her grandmother, a concert pianist.
At 17, as a member of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Patricia Brennan toured all countries of the Americas and performed with renowned musicians including the classical music cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the latin jazz and classical music alto saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Paquito D’Rivera.
In addition, Patricia Brennan was performing with leading Mexican symphony orchestras such as the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra and the Minería Symphony Orchestra. She won several marimba competitions as well as young artist competitions before moving to the United States in 2004, studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she played under famous conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle and Charles Dutoit as well as with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
As a sidewoman, she worked for the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus, Matt Mitchell’s Phalanx Ambassadors, the Webber/Morris Big Band, Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Big Band and many others. She has collaborated with the pianist Vijay Iyer, the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and others.
Her solo debut album MAQUISHTI, recorded at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in New York in August 2018, was released on the label Valley of Search in January 15, 2021. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and get the album MAQUISHTI from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de.
After the album More Touch, released on Pyroclastic Records in November 2022, followed Breaking Stretch, released on the same label in September 2024. In 2025, Patricia Brennan will release a duo project with the Swiss pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier entitled TALAMANTI.
Patricia Brennan Septet. Photo copyright: Frank Heath.
Patricia Brennan. Photograph copyright: Frank Heath.
For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations from the liner notes of the Patricia Brennan Septet: Breaking Stretch jazz album have not been put between quotation marks.
Jazz album review added on December 2, 2024 at 22:19 German time. Additional photos added on December 2, 2024 at 23:50 German time.
