Jacob Sacks - Fishes

2018 release

It makes so much sense for a Portuguese record label to release a new opus of the New York pianist and composer Jacob Sacks, considering his many connections with the jazz scene of this country and musicians like João Lencastre, Sara Serpa, André Matos, Gonçalo Marques and Demian Cabaud. Sacks is widely recognized as one of the most creative musicians in his hometown, and “Fishes” presents him in the company of other notable protagonists of the New York jazz scene, all of them members of the Clean Feed family: Ellery Eskelin, Tony Malaby, Michael Formanek and Dan Weiss.

Here is a meeting of giants led by someone who has already covered the entire range of that music we call jazz, by the side of the greatest: Clark Terry, Joe Maneri, Charles Gayle, Paul Motian, Lee Konitz and too many more to mention, going from mainstream to the most audacious exploratory music. Inside this recording you’ll find all the identifying characteristics of Sacks’ personal style and more: harmonic subtleties, structural simplicity, deep and mysterious meanings, a refined sense of form, poetic beauty, rhythmic drive and lots of soul. You start to be overwhelmed by the way the little pieces of the clock function, until you let yourself go with the balance produced by the sculptures of time coming track by track.