Bio:
Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, pianist and composer Marta Sánchez is actively working in the contemporary creative music scene in New York City and around the globe. Charting a significant path through her innovative and original music, she has reached an international audience, gaining significant global recognition.
After finishing her classical training at the Conservatory, she began her academic training in jazz and contemporary music at School of Music Populart, earning a grant from A.I.E. (Spanish Association of Musicians) for being one of the best students there. The first band she created, Zafari Project,was selected by the Spanish agency for youth (INJUVE) as one of the most promising on the Spanish scene, giving them the opportunity to tour around Spain playing in different Jazz Festivals. This band also won the first price at the international jazz contest Debajazz, which is not the only jazz contest Ms. Sánchez won, since she also obtained the first prize at the Jazzargia International Jazz Contest with Javier Moreno Trio and the first prize at San Martin de la Vega Jazz contest with Natalia Calderon Quartet. She is the only musician in Spain who has been selected on three occasions by AECID (government agency for international development cooperation) to represent Spain at jazz festivals in different countries around South America, Central America and Europe; with her own band on two occasions (2009, 2012) and with Natalia Calderon Quartet (2009). In 2010, she received the “A.I.E en Ruta” Touring Grant from the Spanish Association of Musicians. In 2011, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, which allowed her to continue her studies at New York University (M.M.). During her time there, she to an international tour in Costa Rica, where her group represented NYU at the famed Costa Rica Jazz Festival.
As a bandleader, she is currently working with her New York-based Quintet with respected saxophonists Jerome Sabbagh and Roman Filiu, her band Room Tales, featuring singer Camila Meza, and with the collaborative band “Snackasaurus Flex”, featuring Michael Attias. She is involved in many other music projects as a collaborator, performer, and/or studio musician, in the United States and abroad.
Her most recent release for Fresh Sound Records, Danza Imposible (2017) got incredible reviews by the New York Times, the NYC Jazz Record, or Downbeat among others. It was also featured at the WBGO by Nate Chinen and in the public radio in the program “Fresh Air”. Kevin Whitehead said in that program : “The music Marta Sanchez writes gets intricate, but she also gets memorable effects using simple means. That’s part of what she gets from pop or medieval music. She can make a melody out of one note and the right rhythm. Jelly Roll Morton called that kind of spark the Spanish tinge.” Her previous album, Partenika (2015), was reviewed by Ben Ratliff it for the NY Times stating that -“It’s an ambitious record by a strong new group” and included it as one of his top 10 recordings of the year, including all genres- Downbeat gave the recording 4 starts and included it on their list of the best recordings of 2015. Dan Bilawsky wrote for All About Jazz that the album”it’s like waking up to a whole new and wondrous world.” and Peter Margasak for Chicago Reader: “Spanish pianist Marta Sánchez finds a new voice in New York”. All Music and the Jazz Journalist Association also listed Partenika as one of the best jazz Recordings of 2015.
She also released for Errabal Records: La Espiral Amarilla (2011) and Lunas, Soles y Elefantes (2008) and the work 49 Riiiing with D’Free Qi thanks to a grant by “Caja de Burgos”. As a sideman she has collaborated in many other Cds like Mediterraciones and Satierismos, both with the Afrodisian Orchestra, Lineas Paralelas with the Talento Big Band, Songs from my heart, with Doris Cales, Matterhorn with John Blevins, or Flor Azul with Natalia Calderon Quartet among others.
She has touring the United States, Europe, South America and Central America, performing as a leader or as a sideman at prestigious venues and prominent festivals such as North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, Eurojazz in Mexico City, Eurojazz in Athens, Jazz Festival Vitoria Gasteiz, and Madrid Jazz Festival. She also was awarded with a MacDowell Fellowship in 2017.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“The pianist Marta Sánchez, who moved to New York from Madrid in 2011, has one of the most quietly memorable groups in jazz.”
- The New York Times
“Conquering her space with a triumphant confidence, Marta Sanchez, proves she is a top 21st-century composer. . This seminal work takes us to unexpected places, radiating energy in its most varied forms and passages.”
- JazzTrail
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).