9th May 2022: Recent Press Highlights for ‘(SAAM) Spanish American Art Museum’ by Marta Sanchez include The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and WBGO

Madrid-born pianist-composer Marta Sanchez released SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) on Whirlwind Recordings in February 2022.

It’s an album driven by emotional candour and boundary-pushing compositions, realised by a talented cast of frontline partners Alex Lore and Roman Filiu and Rashaan Carter and Allan Mednard on backline duties, alongside Sanchez.

Recent press highlights for the album:

“A fine pianist who is a particularly inventive arranger-composer… SAAM serves as an excellent introduction to her writing.”
DownBeat Magazine

“Powerful without ever being loud, Spanish and American as its title suggests, complicated in its construction but clear as can be in its emotional power. All the dualities resolve in the hands of an artist as fine as Marta Sanchez.”
Pop Matters

“Ms. Sánchez’s music is accessible and lovely, yet built on stark contrasts. One rhythm rubs against another. Multiple melodies coexist. Gentle passages get interrupted by sudden crashes.”
Wall Street Journal

“Sanchez expands her creativity both technically and thematically. A bold addition to Sanchez’s superb discography, the album is testament to her maturing musicianship.”
Jazziz

“There’s a dreamlike quality to most of the music here. Not fairy tales, mind you—far from, in fact—but there’s a floating narrative in the way the music glides; it’s reminiscent of the way dreams rarely follow rigid sequences.”
JazzTimes

“Sanchez’s deeply thoughtful, insightful examinations explore what’s right there in front of us, instigating new discoveries. Ultimately, the winding path on which the pianist embarks is as exciting as the final destination.”
Best Jazz on Bandcamp

“One of the most consistently satisfying bands in contemporary jazz — largely thanks to the well-ordered complexity and openhearted energy of Sánchez’s tunes, which blur the divide between lead melody and accompaniment, steady pulse and unruly drift.”
New York Times

“The music exists in the current mainstream vanguard of New York, where the technical astonishments, particularly the high-octane interplay, are hidden in plain sight behind a sleek, appealing melodic lustre.”
The Quietus

“This is an album constructed in the old fashioned way, to tell a story, so there is narrative arc in which each track contributes to the whole.”
★★★★ Jazzwise Magazine

“In SAAM, she [Marta Sanchez] manages to combine that musical complexity with lyrics that go straight to the point.”
Al Dia

“Exquisitely calibrated music.”
WGBO

“The music – brainy, emotional, energetic—will not yield its treasures to cursory attention… Intelligent and heartfelt, Spanish American Art Museum voices a compelling composer, pianist, and bandleader.”
Musically Speaking

“You will return time and again to savor its rich colors, vibrant and emotional melodies, and its rhythmic delights.”
Step Tempest