LENOX — Close Encounters with Music (CEWM) will present Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based vibraphonist, improviser, and composer Patricia Brennan at Wyndhurst Manor Sunday, May 15 at 12 p.m., for a performance and luncheon benefitting CEWM’s commissioning program, which has supported premiers of 22 works by 18 composers.
Patricia Brennan was born and raised in the Mexican port city of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. (Brennan? Really? Yup! Her husband, Noel, is Irish.) She studied classical music with her grandmother, a concert pianist, and performed Mozart piano sonatas in student recitals as a child. But her father played percussion in Latin salsa bands, and throughout her childhood, Brennan soaked up the sounds of her father’s music, as well as the Cuban and Afro-Cuban sounds that were popular in her own neighborhood. Her mother introduced her to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
Brennan joined the Youth Orchestra of the Americas at age 17, touring every country in the Americas and performing with people like Yo-Yo Ma and Paquito D’Rivera. Soon she was playing in Mexico’s top symphony orchestras, including the Xalapa and Mineria Symphony Orchestras, and won several marimba competitions and young artist competitions in Mexico and abroad.
If you listen to Brennan tell her story about getting accepted into the highly competitive Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 18, you will soon realize that, at the time, she was completely unaware of what a big deal it was to attend Curtis. That’s because she didn’t actually apply to Curtis but was invited by a professor there who had heard her perform with one of the jazz ensembles she worked with in New York City.
From Curtis, Brennan went on to earn a master’s degree from New York University, where she is now on the Music Adjunct Faculty of Music and Performing Arts Professions.
Brennan is a member of the Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Matt Mitchell’s Phalanx Ambassadors, Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus, and various other “big” bands. (They don’t call them “big bands” because it reminds people of Benny Goodman and Glen Miller, which is a whole other type of music.)
After playing for over 10 years alongside prominent musicians of New York City’s avant-garde jazz community, Brennan realized she had something of her own to express, and has pursued this calling through improvisational music and composition, focusing on vibraphone and mallet percussion.
Having studied or played every kind of music from classical piano to jazz standards, Patricia Brennan has plenty of harmony bouncing around her head — enough to spare, by all accounts. And it comes out — a little at a time — in her improvisations and compositions. As a composer, she is on friendly terms with tonality, but not so friendly that she could ever be enslaved by it.
Brennan’s debut album, “Maquishti” is on the best-albums-of-2021 lists of the Wire, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. She recently made an electronic re-working of “Maquishti” with percussionist, drummer and turntablist DJ Arktureye (Noel Brennan) and special guests. It is titled “Maquishti Prismatic.”
To join the waitlist for this benefit concert, contact CEWM at 800-843-0778 or cewmusic@aol.com.
