Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Vocalist Andy Bey Dies at 85
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Antonio Sánchez accompanied the film Birdman at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Feb. 16 with a display of solo drumming that he composed as the movie’s score.
(Photo: Reed Hutchinson)The incidence of screening films along with live musical performances—onstage or in an orchestra pit—is nothing new. But there have been some inventive twists in recent years, as with Bill Frisell’s Buster Keaton scores.
What gave special distinction to the screening and performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Feb. 16 had partly to do with the musical equipment onstage—a single, large drum kit. Welcome to the world of “BiRDMAN LiVE,” in which Antonio Sánchez played his unique, drum-based film score to the fascinating 2014 Birdman, which was written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
In this case, the live screening and performance served to illustrate—in real, real-time—ways the synchronicity of the film and music in this project address the volatility, ecstasy and agony of making art. In this wild-style tale with debts to Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, a former superhero character (Michael Keaton) is grappling with his waning sense of artistic self by putting on an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story in a historic Broadway theater while facing internal and external doubts and demons.
Sánchez came onstage at the acoustically friendly Royce Hall and gushed, “I am the only drummer in the world who gets to play on this stage by themselves.”
He explained to the crowd the circuitous story of his Birdman gig, reaching back to when he was a music-hungry kid, listening to a Mexico City radio station where a DJ—Iñárritu, it turned out—played work by the Pat Metheny Group years before the drummer moved to New York and became an ally to the guitarist for multiple projects.
Sánchez and Iñárritu became acquainted in the U.S., and the director (known for stretching artistic boundaries, starting with his Amores Perros in 2000 and more recently in 2016’s The Revenant) called the drummer up one day with the novel idea of hiring him to score his next film—using only drums. In the end, it was a radical but brilliant call, and the flexible and compositionally inclined Sánchez was precisely the person for the job.
Ironically, Sánchez’s ground-breaking drum-centric score wasn’t eligible for an Oscar nomination due to technicalities. But the film went on to win four Oscars, including Best Film. The drummer, though, received a bit of vindication when he won a Grammy for the soundtrack.
Although the film uses musical cues and colorations sparingly, Sánchez’s drum parts took on important roles when they did appear. Sánchez’s approach to the live context mostly was structured around the original score, with some space for the kind of improvisation that initially informed the composition.
Drum grooves lent lean tension and a pulse to certain scenes, while looser atmospheric work on the drum kit expanded the complexity of particular emotional content on screen. Rumbling toms punctuated a scene in which actors played by Keaton and Edward Norton are carrying on a heated, syncopated discussion.
Viewer’s pent-up desire to hear Sánchez fully in his element was satisfied when he launched into a 20-minute solo over the film’s end credits, which extended into an invigorating music-for-music’s-sake postlude. Here, listeners got a hearty taste of Sánchez’s musicality as a drummer, one whose solos can seem imbued with compositional and melodic logic—working on motifs and following ideas—while also displaying measured bursts of rhythmic intrigue and intensity that inspired shouts from the audience. He ended with the gentle sound of scraping a cymbal, like a fade to sonic black.
On the following night, at a new-ish downtown L.A. spot, Ace Hotel, Sánchez was more in his traditional element. Here, he was performing music from his album The Meridian Suite with his group Migration, sans screens or movie stars in the picture. DB
“It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”
Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Foster was truly a drummer to the stars, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson.
Jun 3, 2025 11:25 AM
Al Foster, a drummer regarded for his fluency across the bebop, post-bop and funk/fusion lineages of jazz, died May 28…
Davis was a two-time Grammy winner for liner notes.
Apr 22, 2025 11:50 AM
Francis Davis, an august jazz and cultural critic who won both awards and esteem in print, film and radio, died April…
“Branford’s playing has steadily improved,” says younger brother Wynton Marsalis. “He’s just gotten more and more serious.”
May 20, 2025 11:58 AM
Branford Marsalis was on the road again. Coffee cup in hand, the saxophonist — sporting a gray hoodie and a look of…
“What did I want more of when I was this age?” Sasha Berliner asks when she’s in her teaching mode.
May 13, 2025 12:39 PM
Part of the jazz vibraphone conversation since her late teens, Sasha Berliner has long come across as a fully formed…
