Antonio Sánchez & Bad Hombre
featuring Thana Alexa, BIGYUKI & Lex Sadler
Drummer and composer Antonio Sánchez left his native Mexico City in 1993 to pursue a music education in Boston, first at the Berklee College of Music (where he graduated magna cum laude in jazz studies) and then for a graduate degree at the New England Conservatory of Music. While at NEC his talent was recognized by his teacher, pianist Danilo Perez, who recommended Sánchez to the great Cuban reedist Paquito D’Rivera as a drummer in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra. That appointment set off a complicated chain of events that has made Sánchez not only one of the most respected jazz percussionists in the world, but an acclaimed film composer as well.
Following the big band stint, Perez hired Sánchez for his own trio and his work in that combo soon caught the attention of guitarist Pat Metheny, with whom Sánchez spent nearly a decade. In 2006 Sánchez began teaching music at New York University and a year later released his first recording as a bandleader, surrounded by heavyweights like Metheny, Chris Potter, and Chick Corea. While carrying on with his own bands, in 2014 Sánchez was enlisted to create the score for the film Birdman, a wildly innovative percussion-only soundtrack that won broad acclaim.
With his 2017 album Bad Hombre, which netted him a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, he embraced electronics, building on the raw beats from Birdman with a collage of contrapuntal synth elements. Sánchez created SHIFT (Bad Hombre II), a kind of poly-stylistic sequel in 2022, but rather than go at it alone he worked with a dazzling array of figures from all over the musical map—including Becca Stevens, Meshell Ndgeocello, Dave Matthews, and Lila Downs—to reveal his gifts as a producer and pop songwriter, although he remains as committed to experimentation as ever.
