Marta Sánchez Quintet at the Blue Note Jazz Festival

Combining elements of rock, pop, jazz, classical and experimental music, pianist and composer Marta Sánchez’s tunes are rhythmically complex but strongly melodic. In the words of Grammy nominee Alan Ferber: “It’s music that tells stories by integrating folk elements with the harmonic sophistication and spontaneity of jazz.”

Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, Marta Sánchez is actively working in the contemporary creative music scene in New York City and around the globe. Charting a significant path through her innovative and original music, she has reached an international audience, gaining significant global recognition.

As a bandleader, she is currently working with her New York-based Quintet with respected saxophonists Jerome Sabbagh and Roman Filiu; with her band Room Tales, featuring singer Sara Serpa, and with the collaborative band Snackasaurus Flex, featuring Michael Attias. She is involved in many other music projects as a collaborator, performer, and/or studio musician in the United States and abroad.

Her main project, her quintet, was created soon after she moved to New York. Since then has released two albums: Partenika (2015) and Danza imposible (2017), which were praised by The New York Times, Downbeat, All Music, All About Jazz, and many more. The recording was selected by The New York Times as one of the 10 best albums of 2015, all genres included; it was also included on the lists of the best recordings of the year by the Jazz Journalist Association, Downbeat and All Music.

The quintet’s next work, Danza Imposible was reviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. “The eight heartfelt compositions transcend their cerebral methodologies, painting compelling chiaroscuro canvases that are beautiful, mysterious and restlessly morphing,” wrote Jeff Potter for DownBeat , giving it four stars. “It’s glimmering, propulsive music, with hints of elegiac Spanish folk song, cool jazz from the 1950s and the Romantic modern jazz of the 1990s,” wrote the The New York Times.

Sánchez has toured the United States, Europe, South America and Central America, performing as a leader or as a sideman at prestigious venues and prominent festivals such as North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, Eurojazz in Mexico City, Eurojazz in Athens, Jazz Festival Vitoria Gasteiz, Winter Jazz Festival in New York, festivals in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Antigua, Guatemala, Greece, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile, as well as various festivals in Spain (Madrid, Castellón, Lleida, Málaga). In the U.S. she has performed at some of the most prestigious club including Jazz Gallery, 55 Bar, The Cell Theater, Cornelia Street Cafe, and ShapeShifter Lab among many others. She has toured the West Coast, Michigan, Maine, Maryland and Connecticut.