Despite her brilliance, at one point in her career pianist Marta Sanchez felt uncomfortable with playing solo – it left her in a vulnerable state that she wasn’t sure she could present to audiences. Her solution: to isolate herself and compose pieces for prepared piano. That’s a brave choice, requiring a lot of experimentation, and acceptance that the methods – paper, tape, Blu-Tack – give her sounds with which she could work. From the evidence on For the Space You Left, they did. It’s not simply a matter of writing straight jazz melodies and ornamenting them with buzzes, thuds, clanks, and other noises – the nine songs captured here incorporate the clamor, letting the specific timbre of a certain preparation drive the creation of a piece. Of course, Sanchez is no stranger to dissonance – her work often balances beauty and discord in distinctive ways. Here she’s given herself a wider array of colors into which to dip her brush, giving her results like the driving rumble of “Echolord,” the expansive landscape of “Pygomora,” and the sculpted chaos of “Estalagtita.” Placing limits on and obstacles in the way of her instrument’s natural flow simply makes her self-expression, as both a composer and a player, blossom even more beautifully than before.
