Patricia Brennan Septet - Breaking Stretch (2024) [Hi-Res]

The title of Breaking Stretch is a concise representation of Brennan’s envelope-pushing ambitions. Breaking references her desire to push herself and her bandmates to their limits, to mine the transcendent results of virtuosic imaginations confronted by unexpected challenges. Stretch captures her music’s intense elasticity, its ability to stretch from the taut and minutely focused to the wide-angled and reaching. Those extremes are depicted in the album’s striking artwork, a mix of astronomical and volcanic images, placing the cosmic and the subterranean side by side – the differences between the opposing poles, as in Brennan’s work, at times nearly indistinguishable.

Jon Irabagon - alto and sopranino saxophones
Mark Shim - tenor saxophone
Adam O’Farrill - trumpet (with electronics on tracks 1, 3 and 9)
Marcus Gilmore - drums
Mauricio Herrera - percussion
Kim Cass - bass
Patricia Brennan - vibraphone with electronics, marimba