Tyshawn Sorey Trio
Mesmerism
The releases of John Coltrane's Ballads album and Thelonious Monk's Plays Duke Ellington were both considered, to some degree, ways to make both of these bold individuals palatable to a greater audience. Familiar tunes could draw in listeners who might not be ready for their own music. While that might really have been Orrin Keepnews' thinking with Monk, it has been debated back and forth whether the Coltrane session was really the idea of the saxophonist or his producer Bob Thiele.
More than half a century later, it doesn't really matter. They're both good albums. But today, when a musician digs into the "classic" jazz repertoire, it's still often seen as an attempt to cater to a wider audience rather than an attempt to reexamine some past works and add a new signature to it.
But when you're talking about Tyshawn Sorey - drummer, composer, band leader, Doctor of music who knows his way around a piano and trombone too - one would be a fool to make such an assumption. Sorey calls himself a post-genre artist, meaning his music transcends genres. I've said at least once that he's creating music for which we don't really have accurate descriptions yet. (Here's a sampling of what I've covered on this blog.)
To discover that Mesmerism finds Sorey (on drums) leading a trio through chestnuts like "Autumn Leaves" and "Detour Ahead," along with works by Horace Silver and Duke Ellington might come as a surprise. But rest assured it also comes with the same depth that fuels the good Doctor's original works.
Sorey is joined by pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer. He's worked with the latter before but this marks his first collaboration with the pianist. Mesmerism came together in an afternoon, meaning the musicians didn't have time to overthink the music, but to dive in and listen to one another. The trio doesn't deconstruct the music, although they do stretch in different ways.
Silver's original "Enchantment" had an exotic feel, coupled with a standard hard bop drive. Sorey, Diehl and Brewer give it a laidback funky feel. It's not a smooth funk, but it has an easy groove to it. "Detour Ahead," which was closely connected to pianist Bill Evans, gets drawn out in a rich 14-minute epic. None of that time is wasted, however. Diehl plays with a lyrical feel that blurs the lines between choruses, making it easy to loose track of time. Brewer also gets a solo early in the piece, and he also steps up in "Autumn Leaves." Along with some time changes in the opening and closing choruses of that song, the bass solo gives some drive to the wistful tune.
Conversely Sorey never demands any solo space throughout the whole album, not even trading fours for tradition's sake. For a player who can make the most angular time signatures swing hard, this is his most deliberately laidback set. But laidback doesn't mean subdued, as his accents really inspire Brewer in "Autumn Leaves," eventually kicking up the mood when Diehl returns.
Motian's "From Time to Time" gets the biggest remodeling job, as the group breaks it down into individual lines with wide gaps between them. Lasting just less than six minutes, its time goes as quickly as the lengthy "Detour Ahead." Ironically, Muhal Richard Abrams' "Two Over One" might be the most straight ahead piece of the whole set, though it retains a unique stamp in Sorey's drum part, which plays across the toms a lot.
The album closes with "REM Blues," which Duke Ellington brought to the Money Jungle session with Max Roach and Charles Mingus in 1962. It only appears on the CD and streamed versions, which makes a strong case for hearing the album in that format. The downhome groove of the song, with an appropriately loose quality in the band, feels like the ideal way to end the album. It has a familiar, lived-in quality to it, but it doesn't settle for being a simple homage to the master. This version is just as much about Sorey, Diehl and Brewer as it is about Duke.
For someone so committed to developing his own compositional voice and getting his own work out to the public, Sorey took a bold leap in trying his hand at classic jazz. Not everyone could pull off such an artistic gear shift. But a post-genre artist is built with that kind of flexibility.
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