Angelica Sanchez - MIRROR ME

[hearsay]

This is an excellent CD by pianist Angelica Sanchez with what is essentially her husband Tony Malaby's group- Mike Formanek on bass and Tom Rainey on drums. Sanchez has touches of Herbie, but with more outward bound ideas and a very loose rhythmic approach. It doesn't hurt that most of the tunes are free, they sound somewhat 60's-ish with an inside out sound. They aren't really that distinctive, but a few of them are quite beautiful. She can tend to use some of the same techniques when improvising though, especially a lot of chromatic movements, but it doesn't sound bad and it isn't done in any verbatim way at all. Malaby sounds amazing throughout, as you'd expect with his own group, he has such an effusive style with incredible chops and ideas and a tone somewhere between a growling Lovano and a yearning Coltrane with a lot of shadings. Sanchez handles herself well enough to sound like the leader, or at least a co leader, everyone here sounds excellent, although I'd say Malaby dominates through the sheer power of his ideas. The communication among everyone is really on point throughout. Anyway, it's a strong statement and anyone familiar with any of these musicians or the "downtown" scene would dig it.

[Other Steve]

Excellent summary, Brett -- concise, clear and right on point. Needless to say, I'm with you on this one... certainly one of the more impressive discs I've heard recently, and a terrific debut for Angie.

[jazzfiend]

Agree with all the above, very nice session.

Oh, and very nicely recorded (open, transparent sound)

[hearsay]

Right, I forgot to mention that. I've heard some other CD's that were recorded at that studio (vijay Iyer's, David Gilmore's) and didn't think they were of the best quality, but this one is much better than those. I wonder what they did differently.