Luminous, barely breaking the silence with miniscule gradations and returns, a Jacob’s Ladder of chimes ushers in Tyshawn Sorey’s Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), the 2022 piece for piano, percussion, viola and chorus which also serves as DACAMERA’s new label debut.
A DACAMERA co-commission with Houston’s Rothko Chapel and composed in celebration of its 50th anniversary, the piece’s opening gesture reflects and anticipates, conjuring sounds conjured for the chapel’s inauguration while prefiguring its own development and distilling Sorey’s compositional approach.
Pianist, writer and DACAMERA founder Sarah Rothenberg’s liner essay describes the work’s genesis. She, percussionist Steven Schick,…
Tag Archive: Tyshawn Sorey
The latest in Ivo Perelman’s endless parade of stimulating duets pairs him with the drummer Tyshawn Sorey who is every bit as perceptive, inventive and wily as the tenor saxophonist himself. Parallel Aesthetics will doubtlessly conjure up comparisons to the original sax/drums free jazz exploit, Interstellar Space by John Coltrane and Rashied Ali. But the concept of dual improvisation with a saxophone and drums has as many differences as there are similarities.
Perelman is a tenor saxophone of boundless facility but was never accused of aping Trane, as he has long ago developed his own language, one deeply rooted in the tradition established before JC emerged, but always looking forward.
Likewise, Tyshawn Sorey is not Rashied Ali.
The power of three has had a great press for a long time, embedded as it’s been in the tenets of Christians, witches, Buddhists, or just the beginnings, middles and ends of fireside stories.
And in the thrifty music-making years after the second world war, the economical appeal of the jazz trio – often led by piano virtuosi such as Bill Evans or Ahmad Jamal, occasionally by such sax giants as Sonny Rollins – also revealed just how much spontaneous creativity could fly from minimal gatherings.
Linda May Han Oh, the Malaysia-born, New York-based Australian bassist and composer whose star employers have included Vijay Iyer and Pat Metheny, leads this standout example, composing everything except for covers of…