David Sanchez: Carib

Puerto Rican born saxophonist and multi-Grammy award nominee, David Sánchez, who performed with the SFJAZZ Collective at last year’s New Mexico Jazz Festival concert at the Outpost, returns with a program highlighting the music of his 2019 release, Carib, which won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album. Sánchez’ remarkable career, spanning 37 years, began in Puerto Rico and was shaped by the rhythms of bomba, plena, salsa, and Caribbean music, which laid the foundation for his groundbreaking work. He has released ten albums, including Melaza, which has influenced new generations of musicians and was listed on The New York Times’ jazz writer Nate Chinen’s book ‘Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century’: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century. Like his 2004 Latin Grammy winning album, Coral, Carib uses a modern jazz context to explore the relationship between the West African drums, melodies and rhythms from Haiti, and music from his native Puerto Rico.  A contemporary pan-African project that also calls on influences from New Orleans and the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, Sanchez notes that the project is “a means to pay tribute to Afro descendent communities who have helped define my music and the culture’s broad ranging beauty and idiosyncrasies. . . and the African diaspora throughout the Americas feels to me like a big river, flowing and changing its formation across various lands, but remaining one immense watercourse.