Label: Sunnyside Records, 2022
Personnel - Angelica Sanchez: piano; Michael Formanek: bass; Billy Hart: drums.
Plenty of introspective moments are found in Sparkle Beings, the new trio outing by the adventurous pianist Angelica Sanchez. This intimate set features a couple of collective improvisations and newfound interpretations of noteworthy tunes by influential pianists like Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Mary Lou Williams, and Mario Ruiz Armengol. Completely aligned with the pianist’s vibes and moods is the bassist Michael Formanek, a longtime collaborator, and the veteran drummer Billy Hart, who, for the first time, helps to add depth and texture to one of her recordings.
“A Fungus Amungus” is an enticing opener kept constantly in motion. Composed by Mary Lou Williams, this piece gets a thorough thematic delineation, with the piano in communion with erudite bass lines and conversational tom-toms. Formanek’s solo comes upfront, followed by fragmented piano phrases and runs consisting of unpredictable, shifting intervals and harmonies. For the final section, a motivic vamp arises with energetic fields dancing around its core.
Both “Generational Bonds”, which is completely improvised, and “Phantasmic Friends” adopt a more reserved posture that is also detected on Cecil Taylor’s “With (Exit)”, a tune first encountered on the 1968 Blue Note album Conquistador! For this variant, they managed to maintain its quasi-epic look with a low-key treatment.
The pensive mood and comfortable atmosphere are prolonged into the first moments of the title track, a 15-minute excursion launched by Hart’s percussive wonders. This quiet deliberation gives way to a strutting section where the bass and the piano walk arm in arm. Subsequently, the sounds get more abrasive, leading to notes colliding at surprising angles and maniacally repeated figures uttered with more grace than flamboyance.
The closer, “Before Sleep / The Sleeping Lady and the Giant That Watches Over Her” consists of a Sanchez-penned interlude that calls for Duke Ellington’s lush tune taken from his Latin American Suite (Fantasy Records, 1972). It’s the most immediately relatable piece on the album; not just due to the light that emits but also because the threesome squeezes distinct, innate ideas into a narrative that coheres. There’s more than one opportunity for Formanek to speak out, both unaccompanied and assisted, and the piece proceeds into a soulful, lyrical passage with the melodic charisma of an indelible pop song.
Favorite Tracks:
01 - A Fungus Amungus ► 06 - Sparkle Beings ► 07 - Before Sleep / The Sleeping Lady and the Giant That Watches Over Her