PATRICIA BRENNAN - Of The Near And Far

Have you ever listened to the music of the stars? No, I'm not talking about music inspired by the stars, but about the music that the stars themselves produce. You say it's not possible for celestial bodies so distant from us to deliver their musical dispatches to our doorstep? The formidable Patricia Brennan begs to differ, and with her new project "Of The Near And Far" she proves it.

Enthralled by the eternal fascination of stars and constellations, the Mexican vibraphonist has studied their balances and symmetries, their orbits and paths, devising a process to extract musical data and structures from them. By overlaying what she obtained onto the circle of fifths, the musician uncovered the hidden relationships behind cosmic harmonies, bringing to light entirely unprecedented timbres, keys and chords. In this communion with the universe, the deepest mysteries are revealed, with all the lightness of someone who knows how to handle the most intricate spells.

Setting aside the complex conception and elaborate development, Brennan's new project is in fact her airiest (if not downright accessible) work yet, a fervent crossing point where rationality and magic, logic and wonder, meet without ever trying to pull the two apart. This is also largely due to the choices made in terms of personnel, expanded to welcome a string quartet (two violins, a viola, a cello) alongside Sylvie Courvoisier, a great interpreter of avant-garde piano, guitarist Miles Okazaki, Kim Cass on bass, John Hollenbeck on drums and percussion, and Arktureye handling the electronics. A large ensemble for a venture at the edges of the known cosmos, told through a language that even more firmly rejects automatic categorization.

Under the pretext of a jazz ensemble, Brennan hones ever further the autonomy of the parts in play, capable of diverging (thematically and stylistically) only to converge again around the same theme. There could be no better introduction than "Antlia" (better known to us as the Air Pump), a constellation of the southern sky that in the musicians' hands becomes living matter, an opportunity to delve into and break away from a brief guiding motif, gradually explored by different instruments and only hinted at whenever there's room for a beautifully polished vibraphone solo. With a placid introduction for electronics alone, "Aquarius" then lets a dissonant bed of piano and strings emerge from the deepest space, just enough for the main melodic line to settle upon it in turn, gently suggested by vibraphone, guitar and drums: if one could imagine a form of lounge music for alien civilizations (though lacking the decisive irony that marked the Cocktail Nation era), the signals being sent from the direction of Sadachbia might offer us some valuable insight.

When the mapping yields more agitated solutions, the ensemble certainly doesn't hold back: from the galaxy of "Andromeda", depicted through a complex fusion mechanism (built on violent shifts of tone and motif, which culminate in a powerful final buildup), to the surprising transformations of "Lyra", as dazzling as Vega (a three-part mechanism that astonishes for the disparity of its choices and their thunderous resolution), the performances remain consistently attentive to the expressive potential of the chosen ensemble, containing the turmoil within the core of a cosmic wonder that feeds even on its own grandiose fury. This design also makes room for superb depictions of the stars and their ancient symbolism ("Aquila", the mysterious flight of the wondrous bird of prey across a glassy landscape, barely disturbed by the accents of the strings) or arcane inquiries that reconnect Brennan to the rituals of her native Mexico (the interlude "Citlalli", the album's true centerpiece and a great display of electronic sophistication).

In the end, all that remains is to peer into Nietzsche's famous abyss, to stay trapped within the fascinating explosion of a universe that will never fully reveal its secrets.

Her music, however, has chosen to reveal itself, granting itself as a gift to a mind capable of intercepting it and then subjecting it to rigorous decryption. Like a star releasing its material into space, Patricia Brennan expands her range immeasurably, once again proving herself a sensitive and daring interpreter of a visionary jazz vocabulary. Near and far, held together in a single magnificent embrace.

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30/12/2025