Patricia Brennan Septet - Breaking Stretch (2024)

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Patricia Brennan Septet - Breaking Stretch (2024)

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The title of Breaking Stretch is a concise representation of Brennan’s envelope-pushing ambitions. Breaking references her desire to push herself and her bandmates to their limits, to mine the transcendent results of virtuosic imaginations confronted by unexpected challenges. Stretch captures her music’s intense elasticity, its ability to stretch from the taut and minutely focused to the wide-angled and reaching. Those extremes are depicted in the album’s striking artwork, a mix of astronomical and volcanic images, placing the cosmic and the subterranean side by side – the differences between the opposing poles, as in Brennan’s work, at times nearly indistinguishable.

Jon Irabagon - alto and sopranino saxophones
Mark Shim - tenor saxophone
Adam O’Farrill - trumpet (with electronics on tracks 1, 3 and 9)
Marcus Gilmore - drums
Mauricio Herrera - percussion
Kim Cass - bass
Patricia Brennan - vibraphone with electronics, marimba

"In 2022, vibraphonist and composer Patricia Brennan released More Touch, a stylistic amalgam of jazz, Latin (Mexican, Afro-Caribbean), and modernist composition. Brennan's quartet on the album featured drummer Marcus Gilmore, percussionist Mauricio Herrera, and bassist Kim Cass. That lineup also appears on 2024's Breaking Stretch, but here they are joined by trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, Jon Irabagon on alto and sopranino saxes, and tenor saxophonist Mark Shim.

The original foursome is a highly flexible wonder of rhythm, but the additional horn players, who contribute strong solos throughout, add to the rhythmic oomph: this is an album where horns can have the force of drums.

On "Los Otros Yo (The Other Selves)," a bass-and-sax riff leads into a soca-like groove, but the catchy opener incorporates much else. A web of horns with contrasting lines keeps things artfully off-balance, and it's a delight to hear the individual instrumentalists weave their way through the sonic matrix.

A bass solo, festooned with harmonics, introduces "Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins)." Cass then launches a speedy bass pattern, and soon the whole band is riding his groove. Tucked in between excellent solos by O'Farrill and Shim is Irabagon's startling sopranino statement: it's wild and squiggly and it rips up the air.

The shortest track, "Manufacturers Trust Company Building," might be the most frenzied. The densely packed, ever-shifting composition layers syncopated horn stabs over rippling percussion and drums. "Manufactured" is dedicated to the great artist Harry Bertoia, whose large multi-metal sculpture, Golden Arbor (located at the titular Midtown Manhattan building), served as inspiration for the piece.

Two quieter, more spacious cuts, "Sueños de Coral Azul (Blue Coral Dreams)" and "Mudanza (States of Change)," stand out from—and provide effective contrast to—the swirl of assertive sounds that predominate on the album. "Sueños," with its cushiony horns and electronically enhanced vibraphone, is indeed dreamy. "Mudanza"'s rolling marimba, bowed bass, and long-tone horns create a sense of mystery that recalls Brennan's solo debut Maquishti, a marvel of unaccompanied mallet percussion.

With each new release, Brennan keeps expanding her sound: one can't help but look forward to whatever comes next." © Fred Cisterna/Qobuz