A native of Veracruz, Mexico and sought-after mallet percussionist on the New York improvised music scene, Patricia Brennan has made vital contributions to the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus, Matt Mitchell’s Phalanx Ambassadors, and more. Her debut as a leader, Maquishti (“liberation” in the indigenous Nahuatl language), is a stunner—just her alone, on vibraphone and marimba, playing with a certain straightforward beauty (“Blame It,” “Sonnet”) even in the midst of such destabilizing wild-card elements as electronics, pedals, subtle pitch bends, and the like.
The first half of the album has a gentle, patiently flowing quality but also a structural compositional logic, with pieces like “Episodes” that build slowly toward busy, improvised line playing and sonic tweaking. Marimba surfaces on “Improvisation VI,” immediately changing up the tone color. There are more unexpected turns in the second half, starting with the harder attack of “Improvisation III” (one could almost mistake Brennan’s insistent thumps for a small bass drum) and the clearer tempo and complex groove of “Magic Square.” On “Point of No Return,” Brennan reverses her mallets to play with the stick-ends, generating an array of previously unheard tactile timbres. On “Away From Us,” she uses a violin bow to get the opposite sound, with wide sustain and blurring between notes. And on the closer, “Derrumbe de Turquesas,” she returns to marimba (as she does on “Improvisation VII”), hovering on slow tremolo patterns with prolonged silences in between.