Bio:
Born in Mexico City, 5 time Grammy Award winner Antonio Sanchez began playing the drums at age five and performed professionally in his early teens in Mexico’s rock, jazz and latin scenes.
He pursued a degree in classical piano at the National Conservatory in Mexico and in 1993 enrolled in Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude in Jazz Studies.
Since moving to New York City in 1999, Antonio has become one of the most sought-after drummers in the international jazz scene. Following 18 years and 9 albums as one of the most revered collaborators with guitarist/composer Pat Metheny, he also has recorded and performed with many other most prominent artists like Chick Corea, Gary Burton, Michael Brecker, Charlie Haden and Toots Thielmans.
In 2014 Sanchez’s popularity soared when he scored Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) which ended up fetching 4 Academy awards (including best picture) and for which Antonio won a Grammy award. Additional film/tv projects include EPIX network's Get Shorty and Hippopotamus among others.
Sanchez currently has close to a dozen recordings as a leader and solo artist. His recent projects to date include the critically acclaimed, through-composed epic The Meridian Suite, the star studded album Three Times Three, Grammy nominated Bad Hombre —a sociopolitical electronica & drums exploration, Channels of Energy, an ambitious project with the WDR Big Band with arrangements of his works by Vince Mendoza and the most recent 2019 release, Lines in the Sand with his band Migration. Here Sanchez turns his political anger into a moving musical statement of epic compositional proportions as much a protest against injustice in our current political climate and as a tribute to every immigrant’s journey.
To date Antonio has been awarded 5 Grammys, nominations for Golden Globe & Bafta Awards, wins for the World Soundtrack New Artist Discovery and Best Original Film Score Award, 3 Echo Awards (Germany), Hollywood Music in Media Award, the Critics’ Choice Movie Award and 3 Modern Drummer’s Jazz Drummer of the Year, among many other wins and nominations. He has been the featured cover artist for DownBeat, JazzTimes, JAZZIZ, Modern Drummer (twice), Drum!, Musico Pro and Drumhead among others.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"I got together a lot with Antonio wondering if he was the guy. I finally realized that he'd be able to meet the standard for this gig. Very quickly, he took things to another place - a very personal and exciting place for the audience....It is thrilling to get on the bandstand with him every night. You just can't wait to play with him."
- Pat Metheny
"Antonio Sanchez is one of the most respected drummers working today. Sanchez transcends genre with the ability to literally play and adapt to any situation with virtually any ensemble."
- Critical Jazz
“Mr. Sanchez emerged as one of the standout jazz drummers on the contemporary scene, a polyrhythmic ace attuned to the subtlest dynamic fluctuations”
- The New York Times
The canopy rises from Bahia to encircle the planet, but but the roots of the Matrix go back decades to Kingston, Jamaica...
I'm Sparrow. I used the contract above, Bob Marley's first (co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21, and this is a copy I made of Clement Dodd's original) to retrieve unpaid royalties from CBS Records. I retrieved money for Aretha Franklin, Gilberto Gil, Led Zeppelin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria and many others. But what if Bob hadn't got out of Kingston, or Aretha out of Chicago? They would have been just as great but there would have been no way for the wider world to know. The world brims with brilliant artists without reach, including writers, filmmakers, painters... So in the Matrix, everybody can potentially be experienced from everywhere in the world. And the famous? Very few people (Bob and Michael Jackson aside) are famous everywhere, plus the famous like to recommend (connect to) too. The pathways are open. As they say in Bahia, "Laroyê!"
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (Susan was personal recording engineer for Prince; she recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times" and she is now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (Julian is the most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; he is brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (Clarice is a pianist and composer, with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers below) evolved...
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
SPARROW/PARDAL ROBERTS
SUSAN ROGERS
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER
CLARICE ASSAD
ALICIA SVIGALS
KAMASI WASHINGTON