eMusic Review 0
This solo piano work from composer Angelica Sanchez is strikingly original, yet accessible to many musical tastes. Born in 1972, Sanchez has worked with respected, gently avant-garde folks like Tony Malaby, Drew Gress, Wadada Leo Smith and Paul Motian, and A Little House features the element of beguiling circumspection common to all of them. It also contains the sort of impulsive excursions and suite-like tributaries that help prompt a kindred iconoclast like Carla Bley to write terse but gushing liner notes.
Sanchez makes spare but impressive use of a toy piano. It arrives about halfway through her cover of Hank Thompson's "I'll Sign My Heart Away," its small, brittle tonality a perfect fit for the plaintive chorus of the 1960s Western swing tune. It is deployed in tandem with a full-blown piano to good effect on "Crawl Space," and is most predominant on the closer, "Mimi," its harpsichord-like quality meshing well with the song's Baroque-oriented melody.
Some of the titles on A Little House seem a bit ironic. "Trickle" does indeed begin with a trickling introductory phrase, but that's soon contrasted with rubbery low notes, which increase in frequency as they diminish in volume, the way… read more »
