Jacam Manricks Band

Born in Australia in 1976, Jacám Manricks hails from a distinguished musical family with global reach. His parents played in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in his home town of Brisbane, and his paternal grandparents were also accomplished musicians. Though he never met his grandfather, who was born in Portugal’s Indian colony Goa, he inherited a passion for jazz from him. An alto saxophonist and clarinetist, Mario Manricks went on to earn a good deal of renown as a jazz and classical reed player in post-World War II Sri Lanka.

With his six previous albums, saxophonist Jacám Manricks established his bonafides as a composer, arranger, and improviser of the highest order. A multi-instrumental master, he spent more than a decade in New York City collaborating and recording with definitive 21st-century players such as drummers Tyshawn Sorey, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Matt Wilson, guitarists Ben Monder and Adam Rogers, pianists Gary Versace and Kevin Hays, and bassists Thomas Morgan and Joe Martin. Manricks’s new album Samadhi documents his continuing evolution as a player and composer, while also marking his emergence as a creative force on the other side of the studio window. Since relocating to Sacramento in 2014, Manricks has built a home studio and intensively studied the art of sound engineering. With New York compatriots Clarence Penn on drums and Matt Penman on bass, and Sacramento pianist Joe Gilman, Samadhi doesn’t just feature his original compositions and arrangements. Manricks produced, recorded, engineered, and mixed the project, while also writing and creating the gorgeous orchestrations that expand the instrumental palette on several tracks. It’s the fullest view yet of a resourceful and vividly imaginative composer also known for working in orchestral and chamber music settings.