(Avant-Garde Jazz) Angelica Sanchez Quintet (Marc Ducret, Tony Malaby, Drew Gress, Tom Rainey) - Wires & Moss - 2012, WEB, FLAC (tracks), lossless

It’s no longer possible, today, to exclude the name of pianist and composer/improviser Angelica Sanchez when discussing the New York jazz scene. With her fluid, loose and lyrical style, contrasting with an energetic and avant-gardist approach, she seems to be at the center of a hurricane, dealing with poetic feelings and magmatic chaos. Somehow combining the influences of Herbie Hancock and Cecil Taylor, in her previous solo album, “A Little House”, Sanchez used a John Cage favorite instrument, the toy piano. Not to play children lullabies, but to introduce ironic and ambiguous shadows in her music, reminiscent of her memories of the horror movies she saw in a younger age, with soundtracks using that tool to maximum effect. If the toy piano was, then, her ghost-in-the-machine, now the same role is performed by Marc Ducret’s guitar. With her quintet (besides the French guitarist, it includes Tony Malaby, Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, three of the best around), “Wires & Moss” is quite different from anything she already recorded. This is electric jazz with a hard bop twist. If it seems a paradox, take notice that Angelica Sanchez is a master of counterpoint, always combining opposites in astonishing solutions...

Angelica Sanchez - piano
Marc Ducret - guitar
Tony Malaby - saxophone
Drew Gress - bass
Tom Rainey - drums