Eurojazzist Goes to Raška: An Unexpected Encounter with Marta Sanchez Trio
Cosmopolitan Jazz in the Heart of Spiritual Serbia
*all photos and videos by Eurojazzist
When we talk about jazz, probably the broadest definition is that it’s the art of improvisation – this is a fundamental characteristic of this music that we would use to explain it to people less familiar with the genre. At the same time, this is also a magic word that comes in handy for mythologizing jazz and everything surrounding it.
Although over the years I have become a cynic who is irritated by clichés in public discourse about any form of art, sometimes I myself enjoy drawing parallels like these, because they are simply an integral part of jazz as music, as art, and even of its socio-cultural context in a broader sense. Improvisation is sometimes not just “music as such,” but also what surrounds the world of jazz.
Coincidences That Make Life
Yesterday I was at a concert by pianist Marta Sanchez’s trio in the small Serbian town of Raška, which is far from having a jazz tradition or any kind of regular jazz program. It only happens when there is some special occasion, which this time was the Raške duhovne svečanosti festival. In an informal conversation with the people responsible for organizing this concert, I also heard a fantastic story about how the concert actually came about.
Nina Nerandžić, the abbess (head) of Gradac Monastery in southwestern Serbia, was sitting in the garden of Hotel Moskva in central Belgrade several weeks ago.
On nearby Terazije Square, during the football World Cup, every four years there is traditionally a huge trading session for Panini football sticker albums, which have been extremely popular in Serbia for decades. That was also happening while Nina was sitting in the garden having her drink.
Among the children and adults in the square (there is no age limit), she spotted her former professor from the Faculty of Teacher Education, a jazz critic and journalist and artistic director of the Belgrade Jazz Festival – Vojislav Pantić. She went over to say hello, and the conversation soon turned to the possibility of promoting his current book in Raška – Nina is on the board of the Raške duhovne svečanosti (Raška Spiritual Ceremonies).
“You could bring a jazz band to perform that same evening too!” Nina enthusiastically suggested.
Little did she know that, at exactly the time of the festival, Voja was helping arrange Marta Sanchez and her band’s appearance at the Belgrade club Bluz i Pivo, and that, completely by chance, she had one free day on the tour.
Welcome to Raška
This was my first time in Raška – a town in a region considered the birthplace of the Serbian state many centuries ago, but also a kind of center of Serbian spirituality, with a significant number of historically important Orthodox monasteries. The town itself has around 6,000 inhabitants and its own local charm, as well as dedicated organizers at the local Gradac Cultural Center, who put a great deal of effort into making us feel comfortable and enjoy our short stay in town.
As I already mentioned in the previous piece, my role consisted of moderating a conversation about Vojislav Pantić’s book “Jazz Sketches of Serbia.” Since we had already done four promotions together that I have mentioned on Eurojazzist, I won’t go any deeper into this segment of the evening, except to say that the audience was satisfied. Voja is a skilled storyteller who knows how to hold an audience’s attention and shape the “dramaturgy” of his presentation, and it also helps that you can see he genuinely, wholeheartedly enjoys what he does.
Doing the Right Thing
The concert was held at the local Cultural Center, in a small multipurpose hall with 220 seats, with somewhere between 50 and 100 people in attendance on this occasion – which I would consider quite a good turnout given the size of the town and the kind of jazz Marta Sanchez plays. There were also several actors in the audience who were taking part in other segments of the Raške duhovne svečanosti program, so the audience was a mixture of locals and program participants from other cities.
Probably keeping in mind the specific context and the event she had been invited to – she was not performing for the specialized “avant-garde audience” that will be waiting for her at Jazzfestival Saalfelden in a few days – Marta Sanchez sprinkled her regular trio repertoire with a couple of jazz standards, namely compositions by authors such as Jaki Byard or Thelonious Monk, all the way to the encore, which featured a wonderful version of Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan.” I also felt that the material was skillfully paced so that it moved almost imperceptibly and gradually from accessible jazz toward the more complex original pieces she recorded on the trio’s latest album, “Perpetual Void.”
It is also worth mentioning that on the current tour Marta Sanchez presented a different live version of the trio from the one on the album, joined by two young musicians – bassist Kanoa Mendenhall and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr.
Mendenhall particularly caught my attention, as she was given considerable space for her solos, which she played without overplaying or “flashy” attention-seeking solos, but with great competence and a strong sense for the music of the band. One day, when she becomes famous, I’ll have a good story about how I saw her in Raška in 2026 when she was still a “promising artist.”
As I already mentioned, there was also an encore. It wasn’t artificial, with the band walking off for a moment and then coming back on its own to average applause. It was heartfelt, and all the more beautiful for it.
Finally, the evening ended with a dinner together and conversations about Serbian cuisine (the unbelievably large, enormous portions of meat at our hotel restaurant), music… and life. This morning we also managed to grab ten minutes for an interview focused on her current solo album “For the Space You Left,” which I also wrote about briefly in the previous Randomizer. I hope I’ll manage to prepare that material for publication over the next few days.
Sometimes I get frustrated that there aren’t too many concerts by foreign musicians in Serbia that suit my taste. But sometimes, through a chain of coincidences, an extraordinary event happens that changes my impression. I appreciate every such moment and look forward to those yet to come.