Patricia Brennan's "More Touch"

Back in February -- eight months and a lifetime ago -- producer extraordinaire David Breskin pulled my coat to the vibraphonist-marimbist-composer-bandleader Patricia Brennan, whose album More Touch (due out November 18 on estimable indie Pyroclastic) he was about to start work on. "You haven't heard of her," he said, "but you will." Sure enough, Brennan was part of the band on guitarist-composer Mary Halvorson's May 2022 release Amaryllis. (Back in 2021, Brennan released a double album document of her solo project, Maquishti. Besides working with leaders including bassist-composer Michael Formanek -- see The Distance on ECM -- she performs in the duo MOCH with percussionist-drummer-turntablist Noel Brennan.)

More Touch is Something Entahrly Other: a percussion-heavy quartet that blends the methods of jazz and contemporary classical music with rhythms from the Afro-Cuban tradition and the Son Jarocho style of Brennan's native Veracruz, Mexico. Cuban-born hand drummer and percussionist Mauricio Herrera has lived in Mexico and is well versed in both musical cultures; he and trap drummer Marcus Gilmore blend their patterns expertly. Bassist Kim Cass can think like a drummer as well as performing his instrument's traditional harmonic role. The sound these musicians weave together is densely rhythmic but dances with light like a rainforest canopy. Breskin's longtime associate Ron Saint Germain captured it all beautifully.

Brennan herself is an exciting new voice on tuned percussion -- as virtuosic as Ruth Underwood, Midori Takata, or Evelyn Glennie, but with an added dimension of sonic experiment. The pitch-bending effect she employs on her amplified vibraphone (Breskin says Nels Cline coached her on Kaoss Pad) gives the instrument a fluid sound that recalls both her friend Halvorson and the early electric piano explorations of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. Most importantly, her compositional intent is the driving force behind the quartet's free-flowing explorations.

Breskin also applauds her spirit: "I've never known a musician to laugh as much as her, even mid-session." That joyous energy is audible throughout More Touch, from the soca jam "Unquiet Respect" that opens the proceedings to the shifting moods and timbres of the tour de force "Space for Hour" to "El Nahuali (The Shadow Soul)," which manages to be both spacey and visceral. On "Square Bimagic," the composition's mathematical structure contrasts with the earthiness of the percussion array, while the two-part composition "Robbin" lets us hear Brennan's electronically altered vibraphone to its best advantage here. Patricia Brennan's just getting started. I look forward to following her creative odyssey wherever it takes her...and us.