Patricia Brennan: Vibraphone Visions of the Universe
From Mexican marimba traditions to astronomy-guided composition, the vibraphonist explains how her album 'Of The Near And Far' maps constellations onto the circle of fifths to generate raw material for genre-defying new work.
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Today, we’re putting The Tonearm’s needle on vibraphonist and composer Patricia Brennan.
Patricia Brennan grew up in Veracruz, Mexico, playing salsa with her dad while listening to Hendrix and Zeppelin with her mom. She studied classical percussion at the Curtis Institute, performed with Yo-Yo Ma and the Philadelphia Orchestra, then found her voice and career in jazz and improvisation.
Patricia’s latest album, Of The Near And Far, takes constellations from the summer sky and turns them into music. She superimposes the circle of fifths over star patterns to generate pitches, then turns them into compositions that reflect a voice as unique as the compositional approach.
Patricia’s ten-piece ensemble features a jazz quintet, a string quartet, and an electronic musician, all conducted by Eli Greenhoe.
Hot on the heels of her 2024 release, Breaking Stretch, which won Album of the Year and Vibraphonist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll, Patricia’s here to talk about finding symmetry between the cosmos and composition, why she carries a telescope wherever she goes, and how ancient myths and modern astronomy shape her work.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Patricia Brennan’s album Of The Near And Far)
Dig Deeper
• Visit Patricia Brennan at patriciabrennanvibes.com and follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
• Purchase Patricia Brennan’s Of The Near And Far from Pyroclastic Records, Bandcamp, or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice
• Patricia Brennan’s acclaimed 2024 album Breaking Stretch on Pyroclastic Records
Educational Institutions:
• Curtis Institute of Music — Philadelphia conservatory where Patricia studied classical percussion
• Youth Orchestra of the Americas — Continental ensemble Patricia joined at age seventeen
Collaborators and Ensemble Members:
• Sylvie Courvoisier, pianist
• Miles Okazaki, guitarist
• Kim Cass, bassist
• John Hollenbeck, drummer and composer
• Kyle Armbrust, violist
• Arktureye (Noel Brennan) — Electronic musician and Patricia’s duo partner in MOCH
• Eli Greenhoe, conductor
Musical Influences and References:
• Keiko Abe — Japanese marimbist who transformed the instrument
• Radiohead — In Rainbows
• Erik Satie — ‘Gnossienne No. 1’
• Glenn Gould performing Bach
• Philip Glass — String Quartets
• György Ligeti — Atmosphères
• Grachan Moncur III — Evolution featuring Bobby Hutcherson
• Kid Koala — Canadian turntablist
• Eighth Blackbird — Contemporary chamber music ensemble
• Fania All-Stars — Legendary salsa supergroup
Composers Mentioned:
• Tōru Takemitsu — Japanese composer
• Iannis Xenakis — Greek-French composer
• Karlheinz Stockhausen — German composer
• Edgard Varèse — French-American composer
• John Cage — American experimental composer
• Steve Reich — American minimalist composer
• David Lang — Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Bang on a Can co-founder
Cultural and Geographic Context:
• Veracruz, Mexico — Patricia’s hometown, historic port city
• Branford, Connecticut — Location of Patricia’s astronomy and composition retreat
• Mexican marimba traditions — UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
Films:
• Contact (1997) — Science fiction film starring Jodie Foster, based on Carl Sagan’s novel
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — Steven Spielberg film
Astronomical References:
• Andromeda Galaxy (M31) — Nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way
• Circle of fifths — Music theory concept used in Patricia’s compositional system
• Constellation guide — Reference for the star patterns inspiring the album
• NASA’s Sounds of Space — Astronomical recordings translated into audio
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(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Lawrence Peryer: I wanted to start by asking you about the music you were exposed to early in your life. My understanding is that your parents both had a lot of music in their lives, but it was different music that they were listening to and playing. I'm curious if you could tell me about that mix, and were those influences in conversation with each other for you, or were they separate experiences?
Patricia Brennan: They were extremely combined. I mean, it's a combination of many things. My parents are engineers, but they're avid lovers of music, all kinds of music. Each of them has their own preferences. My mom's a little more of a rocker, you know, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Cream, all those bands from their time.
My dad's a little more into Latin influences, like Brazilian music like Elis Regina and Jobim, Fania All-Stars, and so on. My grandmother, my dad's mom, was a concert pianist, so she used to practice in our house, and I used to get to hear that repertoire through her.
Same thing with my mom's grandfather, who was really into opera and big band music. It was always a combination of everything, every day. In Mexico, we have this big meal in the middle of the day where everything shuts down, particularly in the provinces. Mexico City's a different thing, but in the provinces, you go home, you have a big meal, you put on some music. Every day was something different. I didn't know what I was going to expect.
The town is also very musically oriented, just because it's a port city. Veracruz is one of the oldest cities on the mainland, not on the islands, where the Spanish came in. There's Afro-Cuban influence. We have our own music, which is a mixture of African, native Mexican, and Spanish flamenco. Walking out on the street, you hear music everywhere. Even if you don't want to, it's there. Literally guys carrying the marimba, following you around. (laughter)
All of this was part of my upbringing, and I have no memory that doesn't include music, whether it's in my house or outside on the street.
Lawrence: What music drew you in first, or did you identify as like, oh, this is my music? What was your taste initially?
Patricia: I think the first memory was I was attracted to groove music. All of the music that I kind of define now, even classical music, but mostly like in the town—salsa or Afro-Cuban. I was just attracted to people, seeing people dancing to it and the groove, how it makes you want to move, because I was able to feel that even when I was a kid.
I think that was probably the first element that still stays with me. No matter what kind of music I write, whether it's with strings or with horns or whatever, I still think about groove and somehow making people that are listening to it move to it, just like I did when I was a kid.
Lawrence: With that said, what is it about the vibraphone that attracted you initially and keeps you engaged?
Patricia: I guess the reduced version of this is that one of the things that is traditional from where I'm from is Mexican marimba. Veracruz is one of the biggest regions—Chiapas is the other biggest region, which is on the southern border. I grew up seeing mallet percussion very young, so I was always attracted to it. When I was at the conservatory and I had to choose another instrument other than piano, I chose percussion because, again, I was attracted to groove, I was attracted to drumming, and that was kind of a no-brainer for me.
One thing led to another where, as a classical percussionist, you play classical marimba, you play vibraphone as part of the curriculum. I was always attracted to it because it combined both of the things that I love: piano, which is the harmony and melody aspect of piano, but also the percussive feel of hitting something that you get from drumming. Vibraphone and mallet percussion kind of have the best of both worlds.
When I started to go into more jazz education—I did my master's in jazz—I had to pick either drums or vibes. For me, it was a no-brainer to just choose jazz vibraphone, and that's kind of how I ended up where I am now.
Lawrence: It's amazing that you were able to—you didn't have to choose between just the percussion or just a harmony instrument.
Patricia: Yeah.
Lawrence: You split the difference. Do you compose at the vibraphone?
Patricia: I do sometimes. I would say that I probably compose most of the time on piano. The reason why is because the vibraphone has a very limited range, just like guitar. Guitar has a low E; vibraphone has a low F, literally a note just above—two notes above the guitar. I feel that sometimes when I write on vibraphone, it's difficult to stay away from getting influenced by that range.
Having said that, I do write sometimes on vibraphone. I have many different systems that I use. One of the systems is sometimes I record myself improvising, and then I transcribe that later on. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I like this idea, or I like this rhythm that I played, or whatever. Sometimes I do that on vibraphone and I record it. It's a way of composing on the instrument, but most of the time it's piano.
A lot of the times I'm using different systems, like the new record. I devised this whole system for just getting raw material that way. A lot of the times that's all I need to kind of get started and just do it away from any instrument, just hearing the ideas or on my computer or my writing system that I use. It's different kinds of things. Mostly piano, sometimes vibraphone.
Lawrence: Before I get deeply into the new record with you, I had a couple of other foundational questions I wanted to ask you. I'm curious about your time or your experience with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. A couple of things about that. I'm really curious about your experience with the people that you toured with. It must have been pretty amazing. I'm also interested in the role that that experience played for you. Was it a before-and-after type thing, or did it help sharpen how you thought about what you wanted out of your life in music? Just curious about the impact it had on you.
Patricia: It was definitely impactful because for the first time—well, first of all, I was 17 years old the first time I did it, and we toured for basically three months. The first month we would be in some kind of residency getting all the repertoire together, getting the whole orchestra to know each other. The first year we did it in Boston. That experience already—I never really left my house before that. Just life-wise, being away from my parents for three months and then being on my own with other young musicians in Boston, it was awesome. It was a great experience just socially and in a time in my life, musically.
This orchestra technically put together the best musicians in the continent. It was an incredibly high-level orchestra that I'd never experienced before until that moment. That was something that I still, to this day, I get chills just thinking about. I think we were playing Mahler Symphony Number 1 the first time I did this. There's an eerie sound to the beginning of the first movement. I still can't forget the feeling of just having a really good high-level orchestra play this. It's when the music transcends the page, transcends the theoretical.
That was something that was super impactful for me to kind of have that experience of really high-level music making, which I never really had to that level before. That's something that really marked me in a way to set a standard for always somehow trying to achieve that experience, not only as a performer but also for the listener. That was one of the things that I took from that, long term.
Of course, just being surrounded—my first year Gustavo Dudamel, who's now coming to the New York Philharmonic, he was a young conductor. It was super inspiring to see somebody like that who has so much energy and just really loves music so much. Everybody there was there for the music, nothing else. That's a message that I still try to remind myself, because as we get older and get more involved in the business of music, sometimes it's harder to keep an eye on the ball. (laughter)
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: Where it is, at the end of the day, it's about the music, it's about our connection as a performer, as an interpreter, and how well can we convey a message to the listener.
Lawrence: What about your shift from the precision that's involved in orchestral work to the more openness of improvised music? What was it you needed to get from improvisation that you weren't finding in the classical world?
Patricia: That's a really good question. Everything really started because I always had an itch for improvisation. Back home, the marimba music, Cuban son, danzon, which I used to play in bands formally, there is improvisation involved. At the time I was like, okay, it's time to kind of take a solo or whatever instrument I was playing. I wasn't really thinking, oh, this is jazz, or this is something separate. It was just, to me, it was just part of the music.
Before I moved to the States, I got this orchestra job, which I think had a lot to do with it too. My position was fifth percussionist, assistant timpanist. For those people that know what that means, it's huge, because basically I'm the last percussionist on the line that plays whatever is left—all the toys, like triangle, cymbal, mallet parts when we have mallet parts, which is rare, especially in the type of programming that orchestras do.
A lot of the times I was just sitting around, counting measures, unless the timpani player would give me a chance to play timpani that week or something. I started to really struggle with feelings of like, this is not what that music-making feeling that I was explaining earlier, that connection to music. This is not exactly what I thought this was going to be. I was starting to struggle with my feelings of what it really meant to be a musician and to express yourself through music.
I still always wanted to write my own music. I also wanted to pursue a solo career in a parallel manner to my orchestra job, but then eventually realized this is not going to be possible. I got a chance to come to the States and be able to quit that job. To me, that was just the opportunity. Okay, now this is it, to pursue a way of performing that I thought would allow me to express myself a little bit more in a more personal way than sitting there in the back of the orchestra counting measures.
Part of it was writing my own music, improvising. A lot of it came from a classical marimbist, her name is Keiko Abe. She's a Japanese marimbist who basically changed the world of classical marimba. She's the one—it's because of her that the marimba now has five octaves or more. She's the one that designed that instrument in the fifties, I believe. She also worked with composers like Tōru Takemitsu, Minoru Miki, and so on to write repertoire, like formal repertoire for the instrument. She was one of the first soloists that could play with an orchestra as a solo marimbist, just like a violinist.
She had this huge impact on the instrument. One of the main things that she does is she writes her own music and she improvises her own language during her concerts. For me, I was like, I want to be like her. When I moved to the States, that was the initial dream. It was just to be another person that did solo marimba concerts and improvised and wrote her music.
Then one thing led to another where I just met a jazz musician, and I was like, well, he does that. He improvises, he writes his own music. I'm going to start studying with this person. One thing led to another. I struggled a lot for many years to—I used to see things black and white, like classical music is lack of freedom, improvised music is full freedom. But eventually I started to see more of the common denominators between both.
In the school that I was in Philadelphia, when I moved to the States, there were a lot of classical musicians that kind of retaught me that classical music doesn't have to necessarily be a play-by-numbers type of situation. There were a lot of musicians that were incredibly creative that would improvise in the style of classical composers. They were improvisers in their own way, in the baroque style, in classical style, and so on. I started to see those parallels between both styles of music or genres.
Nowadays, I think especially as I continue to find more connections, especially with my last record, there are more common denominators than we think. In my case, just because of the nature of that percussionist job, I didn't see it at the time until much later.
Lawrence: Is harmony the common denominator or the initial recognition of a common denominator?
Patricia: Absolutely. I mean, harmony is one of them. Especially if you really just take a specific example of what jazz harmony is, you can find it in a Bach prelude. Harmony is the common denominator, but then it's kind of beyond that. It's the freedom of interpretation, like a really good classical interpreter like Glenn Gould. Glenn Gould was an improviser at heart playing a through-composed piece. Nobody sounds like Glenn Gould playing Bach because he was playing beyond the notes. He was not just translating the sheet music; he was interpreting the sheet music from a composer-improviser mindset, even though he was basically playing a through-composed piece.
That's kind of what I mean. There are more common denominators where you truly see classical music for its own language and how there are people within that world that treat it just like jazz musicians treat our own language, in a way. Which, in a sense, contributes to the language that I try to create with my compositions, where you can't necessarily pinpoint it in a jazz box, but you can't pinpoint it in a classical music box. It has a little bit of both, has a little bit of other things.
I think because that's when I really started to think about this common denominator, it could be something that's more practical, like, okay, the harmony, the rhythmic elements. Yes, those are things that are common, but then something that's beyond, which is more of a mindset and an approach to the music of true interpreters like Martha Argerich, Horowitz, all these fantastic classical interpreters that—it's indistinguishable when you listen to their versions of whatever piece they're playing.
Lawrence: That's very helpful to me as a listener. I appreciate that. Rather than me trying to do a poor job of this next task, could you explain for me and for listeners what is the system that you refer to that you employ for this new record?
Patricia: Yeah. I mean, I guess in a nutshell, I'm a very amateur astronomer, but I've always been fascinated by just the science behind what's beyond. Something that I noticed was just the shapes in the skies, since I was very little. I was like, I see a bunch of triangles everywhere. Everything is connected by a triangle no matter how I see it.
I noticed, okay, the constellations have a very symmetrical shape. I'm curious if this symmetry and this balance can translate in some way into symmetry and balance musically. That's how this whole thing started, of just, well, let me find what is a symmetrical shape in music. The circle of fifths is very symmetrical, very much a scientific formula in a sense, because you can figure out so many things out of the circle of fifths.
Let me see what happens. It was almost like an experiment: What if I superimpose a symmetrical constellation, or a constellation, over the circle of fifths and see what points get triggered? By points, I mean, if a star aligned with one of the letters of the circle of fifths, okay, that's a pitch that I'm going to consider.
Curiously enough, I think the first one that I did was actually the first track on the record, "Antlia." That was the first one that I did. The combination that I got was literally an E-flat major seven sharp eleven chord. Those were the pitches I got: E-flat, G, B-flat, D, and A. To me, it was like, well, this is crazy. (laughter)
That's where it started. At first it started—I wasn't trying to do a whole project or anything. It was just out of my own curiosity. It was in the summer, and during the summer my husband and I usually go to a place in Connecticut where I have access to the sky and I bring my telescope and everything. It was just out of my true curiosity.
I feel like musicians, we are scientists too. We're constantly discovering and researching and trying to find another angle to the twelve notes that we deal with every day. This is where, how this started.
Now I do want to clarify, because I think sometimes in the booklet, looking back, sometimes it sounds very intellectual. But for me, this was just a starting point. It was a way to get raw material that would be basically uninfluenced from any preconceived scale or preconceived key signature or anything. I wanted to find another way to just get pure collections of pitches that are determined by the system. I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't decide it was going to be an E-flat major seven chord. That literally is just what I got.
Then that's it—I'm going to use that. But sometimes I got some kind of more weird combinations that I had to somehow find a way of how to use. It was my raw material, and then, of course, I use tactics and techniques that I've used before in my writing and just took it from there.
Lawrence: Do you mind me asking, where do you go in Connecticut? I'm from Connecticut originally.
Patricia: Oh, Branford.
Lawrence: Oh.
Patricia: Branford, Connecticut.
Lawrence: I grew up outside of New Haven.
Patricia: Oh, there you go. (laughter)
Lawrence: I used to go fishing in Branford.
Patricia: There you go. My husband's grandmother, her dad built this cottage on—there's all these communities where they own the land together, but they have the cottages on the water. It's shared by the whole family because, you know, it was his grandmother, but she has a brother. Now everybody that uses it is like a branch of twenty people. (laughter)
I'm just super grateful because we're on the water, and then at night it's complete pitch dark.
Lawrence: Beautiful.
Patricia: That's where I do a lot of my astronomy work. Actually, a lot of composing—a lot of my records were kind of composed there because it's kind of like a retreat. There's nothing around, but even though you have Branford very close, you can go to the city, go to the grocery store. But when you're there, you're completely isolated, and just that kind of nature around—I'm from the water, so being around the water is really important to me.
Lawrence: Yeah, me too.
Patricia: It really is a very special time for me, which has allowed me to get the juices flowing in a way.
Lawrence: It's funny, I can't be landlocked. If I realize I'm in the middle of the country or I'm somewhere where I'm landlocked, I need to find a lake or a river.
Patricia: Yeah.
Lawrence: It's very grounding and recentering.
Patricia: Absolutely. There's something very special about the water that makes you forget where you are, because it's the—especially the abyss aspect, which I wrote one of the pieces about. You see the horizon, and at night you don't see the end or beginning to it, and something super special.
Lawrence: You mentioned a moment ago about the scientific aspect of astronomy, and something that struck me when I was listening to the record while I was preparing for our time together, I was thinking about a little bit of the—I don't know if you'd call it romantic or philosophical—aspect of astronomy in terms of you're observing, you're basically looking at the past. You're seeing light that has been traveling here longer than we've existed. I don't mean you and I; I mean all of us, any of us have existed.
Patricia: Yeah, like billions of years. I mean, that is one of my favorite things, which is a time machine. Looking through the lens, I think this past summer for the first time I was able to actually see the Andromeda Galaxy, like quote-unquote clearly, because you see it as a smudge of gas. That's actually—all those pictures you see online, that's a different thing.
Regardless of that, to me it was like, oh my God, I'm seeing something that happened many, many, many, many years ago now from this spot, what I am standing on our planet. To me, that's one of the wildest things, which is what makes me want to keep doing it, want to keep observing, because it's almost a glimpse into the past, and I get to travel in that time machine whenever I look through the lens. It's a really amazing experience.
Lawrence: It's interesting, Patricia, because I talk a lot both on this podcast and with my friends about the time machine aspect of music. I like to tell people, oh, I have a time machine. I have a thousand of them. I go downstairs and pull one off the shelf. All of my records are time machines.
Patricia: Yeah.
Lawrence: It seems you've found one as well. I'm curious about, if it's not too much to ask, if it's not too abstract, how do you connect the temporal dimensions of astronomy and music? Or maybe to simplify the question, could you talk a little bit about those symmetries between astronomy and music? I mean, I think you found some of those in the math of it, I guess, but I'd love to hear you talk about that a little more.
Patricia: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely the scientific part of it, which is what I got from the design, the system, the exact science behind the universe. At the end, I think of math a lot. This is another thing that I use a lot for writing music. My parents are both engineers, so math was always a way to explain almost everything. Especially my parents would always be like, you can explain everything with math, and also sometimes have to create new math to explain something that we can't explain yet.
I was always fascinated by that concept. Even just the history of our place in space. In order to calculate the landing point on the moon, we had to do some serious math equations behind it to make sure that it's the right place, or coming back home, to make sure that they land in the Bahamas and not some other place on earth.
To me, that's super important. The universe is an extension of that, where everything can be explained down to numbers. That is one aspect, because obviously there's the philosophical, the esoteric aspect of the universe that you were mentioning. You were talking about the connection of the universe and the music, or astronomy and music. Numbers, to me, are the key common denominator. It's all rhythm. Numbers are rhythm to me.
A lot of the rhythmic structures in my pieces and my compositions come from numerical combinations. Time and rhythm in music is basically we're measuring in an exact manner sound in space. We decide—it's a system that we decide to be able to measure the length of a sound in space. How is that different from thinking as an astrophysicist, to measuring sound in space? Literally the same thing.
I think there are those common denominators that, again, are scientific. Another thing that comes to mind that I was always really into is, very, very back in the day, math, geometry, music, and astronomy used to be taught together because there are all those common denominators within them.
Pitch in music, not just rhythm, pitch in music could also be measured. There are those esoteric things. I remember taking a class in my master's called Psychology of Music because I was always attracted to the idea as to why do we feel sad every time we hear a minor chord? Why do we make that connection? Yes, there is almost like the Pavlovian effect, where we are so used to seeing a sad scene in a movie that comes with a sad sound. Immediately we make that connection, or a sad love song is in a minor key. Immediately we make that connection.
But I started to kind of dig down into that too, where it really comes down to the frequencies of each note and how those frequencies resonate with our body, and those feelings that we get—not all of it, but some of it, the scientific aspect has to do with that resonance, that particular hertz frequency that that pitch or that combination of pitches has. This has been—you see some musicians like creating their own systems that work with those resonances and so on.
I was always really into creating that, in a sense, that scientific explanation as to why do we feel or think these things in music that usually we tend to overlook as, oh, it's just the magic of music. I'm not saying that magic in music doesn't exist. Absolutely, there are those things that you just can't explain. There are those things where you listen to a really, really good song and you just can't stop listening to it. There are some things that I truly—we just can't explain that scientifically.
Lawrence: I would argue there are lots of those similar things in math as well, though. You look at something like the golden ratio or the way sometimes numbers resolve and work...
Patricia: How do you explain that? No idea. How do you find the golden ratio basically in everything in the universe? That is one of those things that, oh my God, this is wild. This is something beyond us that we can't explain. Absolutely, there's those, and that's where the philosophical and theological aspect of music, of astronomy, of just our way of understanding our place in the universe comes into play.
This record kind of has a little bit of both, where I focus on some of the scientific aspects. But also, like a song like "Aquarius," I was dealing with something personal that, in a sense, I imagine could be the emotions that Ganymede was feeling when he was kidnapped by Zeus and basically was destined for eternity to serve the gods. I was trying to connect to that feeling of kind of, you feel impotence, you feel like you can't do anything about it, but then at the same time, you still have to stay hopeful. You have to be resilient, and you have to try to see the light at the end of the road.
That piece was kind of embodying those emotions, even though it came from a scientific design of getting pitches from a constellation. It's a little bit of both in how I see music, but also, again, in this record, how I wrote those pieces.
Lawrence: I'm sure I'm not the first one to point this out to you, or perhaps you've realized this for yourself, but it's really fascinating to observe the manifestation you are of not only your parental influences and all that other music, but the engineering and the artistic sides. It's kind of fascinating to talk to you through that lens of like, you're all those things.
Patricia: Yeah. I mean, I think that's something I was talking to somebody about the other day. Music is a vehicle of expression, and what am I trying to express? I'm trying to express my perception of the world, my experience, but also I'm trying to use it as a method to figure some things out that could be personal, that could be questions that I have about the world. Music, that's what music is to me. The engineering, all that stuff is part of who I am. To me, it would be almost unnatural to not reflect those things in my music.
Lawrence: Have you ever spent any time listening to the astronomical recordings and the music of the—there's all these recordings that NASA and radio telescopes have made of the sounds of the universe. Have you thought about any of that as a compositional prompt?
Patricia: Yes. Yeah. Actually, in fact, something that I didn't write in the liner notes, there is the sound of a black hole on the intro of "When You Stare Into the Abyss." I think the first time I got fascinated with this was when I watched the movie Contact.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: I mean, later on, you learn more that all these things are totally not exactly right. You don't just put headphones and listen to the universe because there's no sound in the universe. You have to find a way to translate those radio waves into sound in some way, and it doesn't really translate the way the movie says. But I thought the movie was still awesome. That's one of the things that I was fascinated by: What does the universe sound like? That's a YouTube rabbit hole that I tend to go pretty hot. (laughter)
Lawrence: I understand. Yeah, I understand. Contact is one of my partner's favorite movies, and we were just talking about how we haven't watched it in a while, and we'll probably have to watch it this fall.
Patricia: I try to watch it probably every year once because it's so good.
Lawrence: I think she does too. I think she does too. I'm that way with Close Encounters. I watch that film every year.
Patricia: That's a good one. That's really good too.
Lawrence: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about some of the influences in this music that might not be obvious to all listeners, like the nineties—Radiohead, Soundgarden. How do these show up in the music? Is it textural, structural, attitudinal, the energy? Tell me about that.
Patricia: I think it's a little bit of all the things that you mentioned. I mean, first of all, like Radiohead, that band became popular in Mexico when I was about, I think, ninth grade. I was fifteen, fourteen years old. It's like you're in that time as a teenager where everything—you want to kind of be mopey just for the sake of being mopey or something.
Lawrence: Radiohead's good for that. (laughter)
Patricia: Exactly. Radiohead was perfect. It was kind of like the soundtrack of a period of my life. There was something just like, I don't know, existential about listening to that music where it would arise those questions of who I am, what am I doing here, where am I going, what's my purpose in life, and so on. I think I used to like to also listen to it because it would trigger those questions within me.
There is the esoteric aspects of the influence of that music, but there are some more, I guess, compositional elements. Songs like "No Surprises" have this vibe where you're riding along the highway and there's no beginning, there's no end. It's, in a sense, a compositional technique in a way. But during that ride, there are all these elements that keep you engaged through the whole song.
I was always attracted to how they were able to do that with very simple elements in a way. If you were to isolate just the keyboard part or just a drum beat, where maybe it was the same drum beat the whole song, how do they keep people engaged in their music? Those are the kinds of things that, for example, a song like "Aquarius"—
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: —kind of has that vibe where you start, you start already on the road, and then the road just ends. But the song never really—the song continues beyond silence. That's, for example, a way to hear the influence of their music.
Then, for example, "Aquarius" has a very steady drumbeat for the first, pretty significantly, first half or more than half of the song, until after the guitar vibraphone solo. Then the drumbeat gets a little bit different, and then it comes back to the original drumbeat. It's a very simple form in a sense, also harmonically—it's all triads, like G minor, E-flat, and so on.
However, the melody is so different; that's what makes it a little more complex. Harmonically speaking, the melody I was thinking of, I guess technically speaking, is upper structures that change the color of a triad. For example, you have a G minor triad, so if you play a G minor triad on its own, it has a sound, a feeling to it. But then if you superimpose an A major triad over a G minor triad, it changes everything.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: This, for example, was more impressionistic influences like Erik Satie. Literally what I just explained now, there's a piece called "Gnossienne No. 1," where he literally uses that concept—a minor triad and then the superimposition of a major triad above of the second note of that scale. I remember it just sounds so eerie and sounds so painful, but yet sad, but yet hopeful. It's like this really weird combination of emotions by superimposing that sound.
That song, in a sense, has simple elements, kind of like I was saying with Radiohead. They manage to add little things here and there that are complex enough, either structurally or harmonically or whatever, to make it interesting. That was another way of making that connection from a compositional point of view.
Lawrence: Would you stay in that space with me for a second and tell me how your process and system manifested on "Andromeda"?
Patricia: Oh yeah.
Lawrence: It feels like there's so much substance in that piece.
Patricia: Yeah. "Andromeda." I mean, as you were talking about Soundgarden, for example, you know—and this is not just Soundgarden, but it's just like that—my mom is a super fan of Jimi Hendrix, and something that I remember a lot from just watching him play on video—I obviously never saw him play live or anything—but it was the rebel spirit of the music and this sense of just pushing the boundaries and not letting anybody tell you, you can't do it. I'm just going to go for it, and I don't care what people say around me.
There's that spirit behind that piece. That piece is loaded with a lot of things. It's a combination of one, the notes that I got from the system. I got quite a bit of pitches from that that I had to even almost break it down into two combinations. That was one thing. Then the other aspect was the story behind the Greek myth behind Andromeda, which was a pretty intense story. I wanted to combine both aspects.
The third element was the fact that the Andromeda Galaxy and our Milky Way galaxy are going to collide in, I forget if it's like 2.5 or 4.5 billion years, but eventually that collision is imminent. That's something—this summer, watching Andromeda Galaxy through my telescope, I was like, oh my God, here it comes. It's coming.
Lawrence: Will you be ready? (laughter)
Patricia: Will I be ready? For example, the ending of "Andromeda," towards the end where basically the music almost feels like it just clashes and bursts into a million pieces, that is literally, in a sense, as a sense of imagery to represent that collision. I wanted the piece to be anxious, to be tense, to kind of have this rebellious spirit in a sense.
That dictated a lot of things, as to the dense rhythms that I used, the dense layers that I used compositionally, like almost everybody is playing at all times the whole time. There are little details too that maybe some people might catch or not. Towards the end of the piece, one of the electronic layers is literally chatter, like people talking, and you can hear it on either side of your ear. That was kind of contributing to that story of, you know, those movies where you can hear like radio stations in space. That was sort of the idea where, you know, we're in space and you hear the ghost of humanity in the background.
There's some elements of storytelling in that piece too. Every single layer has an explanation. Also, the rhythmic aspect of this, the time signature, it's basically a big five. It's interesting. Sometimes I see people describe the time signatures, and they are hearing the other layers like, oh, it's in seven, or it's in four. It's actually in five, but there are multiple polymeric layers, just people playing in seven over the five, playing in three over the five, playing in four over the five, and so on.
I did that on purpose because to me, that density is kind of what I was envisioning of not only the emotions of the myth, the collision, and also the density that I got out of the system of the constellation. I got quite a bit of pitches. It's a quite dense pitch collection. That's an example. I mean, there's a lot I could explain where it's basically every layer of that piece.
A lot of my writing in general is like that, where there is a purpose for everything, just like when you see a Pollock painting. It looks super dense, but when you really get deeper into it, when you hear his story and his explanation of that, then oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense why there's all those things happening at once. "Andromeda" is one of those situations.
Lawrence: It's a very successful piece in my mind. Hearing the narrative you just gave me about it very much resonates with my experience as a listener.
Patricia: That's awesome.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: That's great.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: I mean, I've always—
Lawrence: I love that piece.
Patricia: I love to hear that, because I was saying earlier, to be able to convey a message to the listener makes me happy. Thank you.
Lawrence: Tell me a little bit about the instrumentation for this album and—as I was thinking about how to ask you about this, there's a simplistic framing, like, oh, it's a jazz quartet with some strings and some electronics.
Patricia: Mm-hmm.
Lawrence: But that doesn't really capture it, and it also doesn't really capture the way the strings are applied. They're adapted for each composition, if that—I don't even know if I'm articulating it well, but can you tell me about the instrumentation and the choice?
Patricia: Yeah, I mean, that was a really good way of putting it. They are adaptive to each composition for sure. First of all, I think my idea behind the instrumentation in general—at first, especially coming from my septet record, which is very intense, horns, kind of in-your-face type of instrumentation or orchestration, I wanted to turn the page a little bit and do something different, not for the sake of doing something different, but I wanted to just focus on a different part of my musical life, of my past, and share that window with the listeners.
This whole record, in a sense, the essence is inspired by my time as a classical percussionist and just kind of giving a nod to all those composers that I used to play their pieces, like Iannis Xenakis, like Stockhausen, like Edgard Varèse, and then later on, like David Lang from Bang on a Can, and so on. Keiko Abe, even, the person I mentioned earlier. Steve Mackey. There are all these new music kind of composers that are still out there. A lot of them right now are writing music and their music is being played.
I wanted to connect to a type of instrumentation that is kind of more common in those circles. For example, like Steve Mackey, some of these compositions, they use electric guitar, they use vibraphone, they use strings, or the electronic aspect, using electronics in a very active way, not just from my gear, from my pedals, but also actually having an electronic musician being involved.
Lawrence:
Patricia: That comes from the Stockhausen electronic pieces or Edgard Varèse electronic pieces that I was influenced by as a percussionist. Philip Glass and John Cage, those are all their big ones. That's kind of how the instrumentation was—okay, piano, guitar, drums. But also the drums are an interesting chair because I didn't just ask a drummer. I asked a drummer with a percussionist background, who's John Hollenbeck. I worked with John Hollenbeck for many, many years, and he was also a classical percussionist. He knew about Steve Reich, he knew about Philip Glass, and you can hear also some of the influences in his music.
For me, he was a no-brainer that he should be the drummer for this project because he can access both the jazz tradition, but also he knows exactly what I'm trying to do here as far as those new music, classical composers, particularly for percussion.
Lawrence: Right.
Patricia: That's kind of how the instrumentation, in a sense, was set. Now the string quartet. I really appreciate that you mentioned that because I didn't want to do the thing where the string quartet is just an addendum. They're just doubling the things that the quintet does. They're just doubling the melody, or they're just comping or whatever, where you can take the string quartet and you can still play the music.
I didn't want to do that. I want to really treat the ten people as indispensable elements of the compositional fabric. Not only is the quartet indispensable to each of those pieces, where if you take the quartet away, for example, "Aquarius," the water is gone. They are the water in that piece.
For example, getting into more detail, the works for string quartet by Philip Glass were hugely influential for me when I wrote their role in this music, because it's more about creating a texture out of the four string instruments rather than the traditional way where you have the bass all on the cello playing more of a bass part, the violins playing more of a melody. It wasn't really coming from that place, but that was adaptive to that composition specifically, because I do use the melodic aspects in "Lyra," for example. That's a whole different approach to how to use the strings.
Sometimes even in "Lyra," each string member becomes a separate instrumentalist in the composition.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: They become another drummer. The strings are going to have two roles: adding to the rhythmic fabric, which is mostly violin one and two, and then viola and cello are adding to the electronic palette. I wrote for them in a way where if you don't pay attention, it might almost sound like an electronic layer, but it's a viola and the cello playing their pattern.
Sometimes I break them up completely. Sometimes they're all doing one of those roles. I was paying a lot of close attention as to how to use the strings in a way that they would help me create this fabric or this density sometimes, or whatever concept, like again in "Antlia," that machine working and having all those little tiny pieces contributing to the function of that machine. Now I have ten pieces to deal with.
To me, from the beginning, it was clear that I wanted to use the strings in that manner. But that is also how some of these new music composers utilize the strings. It's not a separate thing. There are sometimes two string players in the ensemble, and then each of them are treated as individual layers of the composition. That also comes influenced by the concept behind this whole project.
Lawrence: How do you know when to give yourself leeway with the system? Because I would imagine there are times where the system needs help. It doesn't lead—
Patricia: Oh, yeah.
[00:51::00] Lawrence: —to the finished product.
Patricia: Yeah.
Lawrence: How do you—is it just a starting point and you use whatever it gives you, or do you struggle with adapting the system?
Patricia: Yeah, I think a lot of the times it was a starting point, but for example, "Antlia," the first track of the record, the whole piece is based on that one E-flat major seven sharp eleven chord. That's it. That's the only harmony that I'm using there, technically. But by using other tactics, because sometimes you can be in one key center, you can be in one chord, but you can mess around with what I call gravitational centers within the chord—
Lawrence: Overtones. Yeah.
Patricia: Overtones, but also even fundamental tone, where maybe instead of always gravitating towards E-flat, like my melodies are always leading towards that downbeat, towards that harmonic downbeat, maybe I'm going to gravitate towards a D, maybe I'm going to gravitate towards the A or the B-flat. It changes the perception. It creates the illusion that we're changing the harmony when we're not changing the harmony.
That piece does a lot of that, where you do feel a harmonic movement, but it's still the same chord.
Lawrence: I love that.
Patricia: And the way I wrote the melody too is kind of using that spectrum, you were talking harmonics, but also even just the upper structure spectrum, where I think the melody's kind of thinking more in G minor, B-flat major seven. But even though the foundation is still that E-flat chord or the bass is constantly playing a G and variations of that, it's not the default, oh, we're in E-flat, so I'm going to give the bass player an E-flat.
I messed around with that in that manner where it's almost like deconstructing it in a way. But in that case, like you were saying, I made a conscious choice. I'm just going to limit myself to this chord. Because of that limitation, I was forced to come up with other ways to create nuance in the composition, which a lot of it is rhythmic nuance, but then a lot of it harmonically and melodically, it's like seeing this one chord in a prismatic way.
That's an example of really kind of adhering to the system. But then, otherwise, like "Lyra," I really took off from it, I think, partially because that was written a little bit more traditionally, so there are more chord progressions, there's more of a counterpoint going on in the strings and things like that. I couldn't really limit myself to just the pitches that were in the series that I got.
Having said that, there's a step that I don't mention in the liner notes after the system. I have this note where I have a bunch of notes. I basically try to decipher this information, like, okay, let me do composite scales out of those pitches. Let me do major-minor, all the different triads that I could get out of each single one of those pitches and come up with different scales out of those triad combinations. I got quite another amount of information after the system that I was still referring to once in a while. Like if I was like, oh, I want to come up with a scale that's not a default scale that we all know, oh, I came up with—I saw this in the Lyra constellation. Let me use that a little bit and then tweak it.
It's a combination of both of the things that you mentioned. Sometimes I took off a little bit more than other times, and sometimes I made a conscious decision of I'm going to stick with it, but I'm going to use other elements to have freedom within that restriction and so on.
Lawrence: I know our time together is just about out. I wanted to ask you two other quick things, if I may. Breaking Stretch was such a well-received—and I mean, rightly so, it's a terrific record.
Patricia: Yeah.
Lawrence: I mean, everybody was talking about it, everybody was writing about it, everybody was nominating it and voting for it, really a big record. I think of it as it was just such a big record over the last couple years. How does that impact you and how does that—because you don't seem like somebody who was frozen by all that acclaim. You immediately moved into something very ambitious and interesting and an evolution. You didn't repeat yourself. Just curious about what's the experience like on the inside of all that sort of adoration, and how does it impact you as a creator?
Patricia: I mean, one thing I would say, as a simple response to that, I never—I didn't choose this path for that, for the praise or all those things. That helps me a lot because I'm like, with my telescope, I'm always curious about something, and I just want to write about it, and I want to explore it. For example, that string project is a concept that I had in the back of my mind for quite a while.
I think after the record, I was like, well, let me give it a go, see, and then basically kind of turn the page and then keep exploring, keep discovering, keep challenging myself.
Now, having said that, I don't want to say that I completely ignore those things. I mean, I'm still pinching myself—
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: —from how that went down, how well that record was received, and how grateful I am for all the people paying attention to it. But I think at the end of the day, it's a really nice thing. It's a really nice feeling. But at the end of the day, I'm still going on the other side where I'm just—music is an endless road. My husband has a really cool saying, which I think he learned from a teacher, where he is like, music is an ocean and you're only given one spoon, which I think is such a cool thing. It's like the universe. (laughter)
We only see such a little tiny part of it, and it feels already incredibly overwhelming and magnificent. For me, there's so much more to explore, so much more to discover along the way. Those things are really beautiful, and I'm super grateful. When people—to me, it's like when you told me earlier, when you connect to the message that I was actually conveying without me telling you what it was, that really makes my day.
Yes, I feel like the attention and everything was great, but I think to me, what got me the most was like, wow, a lot of people ended up connecting with that music. That's the part that really touches me in a very special way and makes my day because it's kind of one of the goals as a composer to convey a message through this medium without words. Our words are the sounds that we create.
Lawrence: Before I let you go, would you mind telling me what are you listening to these days, or what's capturing your ear, or what should I listen to?
Patricia: It's funny, I was just talking about this with one of my students, because I feel like sometimes—this happened yesterday in one of my classes, they were asking me that same question, so I showed them my playlist, and they were completely shocked because I think maybe I had one jazz record in there.
Actually, one of the things that I listened to this morning—one of the things that I do every day, regardless of where I am or how busy I am, is as soon as I wake up, I try to listen to music, ideally an hour, but if not, at least one piece or something. Today, for example, I listened to György Ligeti's Atmosphères, a Claudio Abbado version with the Vienna Philharmonic. I've listened to that piece before, but sometimes I like to revisit things like that.
Then in a few days, another thing in my playlist, which is a recommendation from my husband, is a turntablist record, which is a turntablist called Kid Koala.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Patricia: I was checking it out like two days ago.
Lawrence: Wonderful.
Patricia: Then some the other day—I'm jumping all over the place—it went back to classical music again. I was listening to Radiohead, I think In Rainbows record, which is also such a great record too. I was on tour, and it was such a great soundtrack sometimes to put along. It's kind of all over the place.
Grachan Moncur III's Evolution. That's another thing that I've been revisiting lately, which is one of my favorite composers, and Bobby Hutcherson is in it.
Lawrence: Wonderful.
Patricia: It's all over the place. (laughter)
Lawrence: Selena.
Patricia: You know, I'm a rumbera girl from Mexico that grew up at the time of Selena.
Lawrence: Yeah, of course, of course.
Patricia: Once in a time you got to put a good cumbia in the background.
Lawrence: That's great. That's great.
Composer, improviser, vibraphonist, marimbist
Mexican-born vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan is “one of the most exciting and innovative vibraphonists at work today,” notes Peter Margasak in DownBeat. As Giovanni Russonello writes in the New York Times “The jazz world can get stuck in a battle between the head and the heart, but rarely do you find an improviser like Patricia Brennan (whose) music seems to exist in a realm outside the body, but stays loaded with feeling.” Brennan’s fiercely original third album “Breaking Stretch” was hailed on more than 30 “best of the year” lists including NPR Music, The New York Times, Bandcamp, Stereogum, PopMatters, The Wire and more, earning Album of the Year as well as Vibraphonist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll and taking the top spot on the annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll. She was also named “Mallet Instrument Player of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association. Her 2025 album “Of The Near And Far” looks to the universe for inspiration and blends jazz, classical and alt-rock influences.
Brennan’s extensive sidewoman work includes the Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus, Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis and Arturo O’Farrill’s Grammy-winning Afro Latin Jazz Big Band, among other groups and collectives. Brennan’s own projects include the solo project Maquishiti; MOCH, a collaborative duo with percussionist, drummer and turntablist Noel Brennan (Arktureye); More Touch, a quartet with Mauricio Herrera on percussion, Marcus Gilmore on drums and Kim Cass on bass; the Patricia Brennan Se… Read More
