Drummer Antonio Sanchez talks about writing score for Birdman.

Antonio Sanchez uses his drumset as therapy – a place he feels the safest, because he is in command of his emotions.

“With drums, it does not spoon-feed to you what you’re supposed to be feeling,” he says. “Drums are a bit more ethereal in that way.”

Sanchez, 44, is keeping the beat for jazz guitarist virtuoso Pat Metheny at the Monterey Jazz Festival this Sunday. Sanchez was born in Mexico City. At age 5, he started playing drums and by his teen years, he was playing professionally. After studying jazz drumming at the Berklee College of Music, he worked his way up to play with Metheny’s trio in in the mid-2000s, and Sanchez played drums on their 2008 album Day Trip to critical acclaim. The year before, Sanchez recorded Migration, his first record as band leader.

Sanchez composed the drum-intensive score for the 2014 film Birdman, which won an Oscar for Best Picture. Director Alejandro Iñárritu, who was a Metheny fan, had seen Sanchez play a drum solo years earlier when he reached out regarding the soundtrack.

“He called me out of the blue. I was excited, elated and terrified,” Sanchez says. “I was just trying to do justice to the acting by using the music for dramatic effect. Drums are the perfect instrument for creating exciting stress.”

Birdman tells the story of actor Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) trying to gain relevance as he ages and the once-famous superhero character he played fades from popularity. Sanchez’s drumming follows Thomson’s ups and downs, and at points, as the story and characters nearly implode, so do the fast-paced drums with wild crashes and snare thumps.

Sanchez likes the creative control of recording his own records, which working with a movie director changes, but working with Iñárritu was different.

“With a movie, you have to be in touch with the director and music supervisor and aesthetically it may not be what you want,” Sanchez says. “Iñárritu wanted the drums to sound beat-up and old, as if they were stored in the bowels of the theater for a long time. I loved how the drums were mixed to sound big and natural.”

Birdman’s success helped boost Sanchez from a well-known jazz drummer into mainstream recognition. “It’s an interesting time for me, because I’m living in the afterglow of Birdman and doing my own band and other projects,” he says. “I’ve gotten to a place in jazz where I get to do only the stuff I want to do. I like having control and really want to do what I want to do.”

For Sanchez, playing with someone like Metheny – who has been in the jazz world for decades as a fusion guitarist recording dozens of records, both solo and with everyone from Joni Mitchell to Jack DeJohnette, and winning numerous Grammy awards – presents an exciting challenge.

“I want to sound current, but pay tribute to those who have come before me. I want to share things I have absorbed through the years,” Sanchez says. “It is something I have to keep in check – how much of the future and the past I want to bring to it.”

Despite the sometimes chaotic noise that comes across in his work, drumming is Sanchez’s meditation.

“It is one of the only times during the day I am completely immersed by myself. It takes everything to be in that moment and deliver,” he says. “It’s cleansing and exhausting and difficult, which all of those things makes is fascinating.”

ANTONIO SANCHEZ performs with the Pat Metheny Quartet at 8:30pm on Sunday, Sept. 18 on the Jimmy Lyons Stage.