Tyshawn Sorey & Marilyn Crispell: The Adornment of Sound

Avant Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde
premiera polska: 14.05.2020
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: USA
opakowanie: digipackowe etui
opis:
multikulti.com * * * * *:
freejazzblog rzadko przyznaje maksymalną ocenę recenzowanym płytom. "The Adornment of Time" taką notę otrzymała. Inne recenzje są podobnie entuzjastyczne. Zważywszy na to, że mamy do czynienia z materiałem w pełni improwizowanym, do tego nagranym tylko w duecie, nie sposób nie sięgnąć po tą płytę.

Tyshawn Sorey, wzięty perkusista, współpracownik Wadady Leo Smitha, Steve'a Colemana, Anthony'ego Braxtona, Johna Zorna, Tima Berne'a, Henry'ego Grimesa, Roscoe Mitchella, Steve'a Lehmana, Marka Ribota, Sirone, Joey'a Barona, Muhala Richarda Abramsa, Vijay'a Iyera, Dave'a Douglasa, Butcha Morrisa i Sylvie Courvoisier. Nagrał płytę z Marilyn Crispell, stypendystką Guggenheima, która po lekturze płyt Johna Coltrane`a, porzuciła współczesną muzykę klasyczną na rzecz jazzu. Przez dziesięć lat grała w zespole Anthony`ego Braxtona, współpracowała z Reggie'm Workmanem, Henry'm Grimesem czy New Orchestra Barry'ego Guya, była angażowana również przy wykonaniach muzyki współczesnej, np. Johna Cage'a czy Anthony'ego Davisa. New York Times napisał, że "jest jedną z nielicznych pianistek kontynuujących free jazzową rewolucję", i "Słuchanie jej jest jak obserwacja aktywnego wulkanu".

Ta nieprzerwana 64-minutowa improwizacja przynosi niezwykle sugestywną, powoli rozwijającą się narrację, od opowieści zatopionej w ciszy, pełnej kontemplacji pojedynczych dźwięków, kiedy muzycy głęboko oddychają i wprowadzają nas w trans (pierwsze 20 minut), poprzez zręby freejazowego flow, z dynamicznymi atrybutami, kiedy to znakomicie przybywa dźwięków w jednostce czasu, po rozszerzoną, zamykającą kodę, wracającą do świata porwanej kameralistyki, kiedy narracja zmysłowo gaśnie.

"The Adornment of Time" to idealny wręcz przykład "pięknego hałasu", w którym nie chodzi o kolejne próby łamania akustycznych barier we współczesnej muzyce improwizowanej. To wypadkowa koncepcji ekstremalnego poety muzyki, jak mówiono o Mortonie Feldmanie i oryginalnego języka jednego z największych innowatorów jazzu - Antony'ego Braxtona. Genialne nagranie!
autor: MAd
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jazzarium
Płyt ukazujących się w 2020 roku przybywa i co szczególnie powinno cieszyć - wiele z nich zasługuje na to, żeby napisać o nich kilka ciepłych słów. Czasami trzeba jednak odłożyć na bok bieżące sprawy, by wrócić do tego, co wydarzyło się wcześniej, a zupełnie niesłusznie nie zostało zauważone. Sporym przeoczeniem był z mojej strony wspólny album perkusisty Tyshawn Sorey’a i pianistki Marilyn Crispell. Nadrabiam zatem zaległości, póki jest na to czas.

Ten całkowicie improwizowany set, który sprowadza się tylko do jednego utworu, trwa nieco ponad godzinę i jest dobitnym potwierdzeniem talentów wymienionych we wstępie artystów. Obie postaci znane są na awangardowej scenie jazzowej nie od dziś, choć reprezentują inne pokolenia i mają inne dorobki. Nic dziwnego, że przed nagrywaniem na żywo tego materiału, nie odbyły się żadne dyskusje dotyczące muzyki. “The Adornment of Time” jest wspaniałym przykładem na to, co może się zdarzyć, gdy spotykają się artyści, którzy słuchają się tak dobrze, jak grają.

Sorey na “The Adornment of Time” za pomocą perkusji tworzy niepowtarzalną atmosferę i przestrzeń do improwizacji. Od pełnych grozy pomruków, przez hipnotyzujące dzwonki, aż po potężne bębnienie - Amerykanin nadaje wyraz całemu przedsięwzięciu. Krystaliczny ton fortepianu Marilyn Crispell i dysonansowe akordy są zarówno rozwinięciem jego pomysłów, porządkują je, jak i doskonale dopełnieniają.

Zakres dynamiki improwizacji tego duetu i sposób, w jaki budują napięcie, jest oszałamiający. Mamy tu zarówno do czynienia z gorączkowymi interakcjami na granicy chaosu, jak i eterycznym minimalizmem. To swobodna improwizacja, która wymyka się prostemu przydzielaniu łatek, czego za wszelką cenę zapewne chcieliby uniknąć artyści odpowiedzialni za zawartość “The Adornment of Time”.

W liner notes do albumu Tyshawn Sorey składa hołd Marilyn Crispell i jej twórczości. Okazuje się, że współpraca z pianistką była jego marzeniem od czasów, gdy dorastał. To właśnie wtedy odkrywał muzykę kwartetu Anthony’ego Braxtona, którego Crispell była ważną postacią. Udało mu się zrealizować marzenie w 2014 roku. Kulminacją kilku muzycznych spotkań na przestrzeni lat jest “The Adornment of Time”. Trzeba przyznać, że Tyshawn Sorey poprzez współpracę z Marilyn Crispell sprawił nie tylko sobie, ale i nam, słuchaczom, naprawdę dużą przyjemność.
autor: Piotr Wojdat
Editor's info:
The Adornment of Time is a remarkable meeting between drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Marilyn Crispell, two titans of contemporary music. Recorded live at The Kitchen in New York City, the performance is the apotheosis of fully-improvised music, a dialogue between two artists who are masters at bringing compositional form to their improvisations. Sorey has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most masterful player-composers of this era, in any idiom,” and The New Yorker declares that his work “eludes the pinging radar of genre and style. Even as his music shifts shape, it retains an obdurate purity of voice.” Crispell, whose playing has been described by The New York Times like “monitoring an active volcano,” is perhaps best known for her association with Anthony Braxton in his classic quartet of the 1980s and 1990s, but also for her many projects as a leader and highly-regarded releases on the ECM label. Comprised of a single, uninterrupted movement, the performance is by turns placid and tumultuous; quietly contemplative until exploding in intensity. Their performance together is an act of collaborative spontaneous composition of the highest order.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of years since Sorey’s last Pi release, Verisimilitude: He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017 and a United States Artist Fellow in 2018, when he also joined Vijay Iyer as Co-director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. His musical output has continued to advance in a myriad of directions. His composition “Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine,” with text by Claudia Rankine, was performed by soprano Julia Bullock and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) on the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall. The New York Times called the performance “darkly captivating” and “haunting…. Sorey created luscious, finely crafted songs that held echoes of Messiaen or Poulenc and made the most of Ms. Bullock’s richly textured voice.” The work will be mounted in a major production at the Théatre du Châtelet in Paris in 2020. His song cycle, commissioned by tenor Lawrence Brownlee, “Cycles of My Being,” about being a black man in the age of Black Lives Matter, with text by poet Terrance Hayes, premiered at Opera Philadelphia, with subsequent performances at Carnegie Hall, and in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and Portand OR, all to rave reviews. Forthcoming commissions include new works for Alarm Will Sound, the McGill McHale Trio, Jack Quartet, a new song cycle for bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and a composition to help celebrate the 50thanniversary of the Rothko Chapel in Houston in 2021. Sorey also released the colossal Pillars, a three CD, almost four-hour work for electro-acoustic octet, and continued to perform widely with his trio featuring pianist Cory Smythe and bassist Chris Tordini. He also performed in two major concerts showing off his career accomplishments to date: One as part of the Composer Portraits series at Columbia University’s Miller Theater, where he, ICE and the Jack Quartet performed six of his compositions, and the second as part of a three-night stand at The Kitchen in New York City, which led off with the concert captured on this release.

Pianist Marilyn Crispell who, at age 72, has been performing for over 40-years and has appeared on hundreds of recordings, including some five-dozen as a leader or co-leader. In addition to her work with Braxton, she was member of numerous Reggie Workman ensembles, and has performed with a who’s who of American and European improvisers. Saxophonist Joe Lovano, with whom she appears recently on his ECM debut release Trio Tapestry, said of Crispell in a recent Jazz Times interview: “Marilyn is a pure improviser. She listens and follows the sound. She’s not playing any kind of style at all; every tone, every interval, every rhythmic nuance, she reacts to it. She has a beautiful sense of music and plays with a real concept about who she is and how she can play within whatever setting. It’s intimate, and each time through is a new exploration of the same piece.”

Sorey and Crispell first met at a festival in Ulrichsberg, Austria in 2005. Crispell recalls that she was “immediately struck, not just by [Sorey’s] playing, but also by the kind of person he was.” Sorey was familiar with Crispell’s work mostly from the classic Braxton quartet recordings, and similarly knew right away that he wanted to work with her at some point. Their paths didn’t meet again until 2014, when Sorey taught a master class at Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, where the two finally were able to play together, followed by a performance at The Stone in New York City later that same year. When it came time for Sorey to decide on what to present as part of his offering at The Kitchen, he immediately decided that Crispell had to be a part of it: “What I admire most about Marilyn is her mindful decision making, intense listening, and the profound clarity with which she creatively responds – all within the immediate moment. She maintains a deeply-rooted understanding of both formal and spontaneous composition and the serendipitous communication and sharing that takes place during our performances has always been most joyful and fulfilling.” For her part, Crispell says of Sorey: “From the beginning, I felt a strong sense of communication with Tyshawn, a shared sense of orchestration, color, texture, rhythm, thematic development- improvisation and spontaneous composition.” Their performance on October 21, 2018, The Adornment of Time, is their third performance together. The music unfolded in a completely dark hall but for two dim lights shone on the performers. The packed house at The Kitchen was completely still, enraptured by what was unfolding in front of them. The music is freely improvised; nothing was discussed or determined beforehand, and according to Crispell, “it simply developed in a logical, intuitive way based on shared sensibilities – a meeting of two spirits on a path of sound.” Starting off as a contemplative exploration of space and fragile silence, what follows is a conversation between two master improvisers with no leader, no follower, and no hierarchy. The work feels compositional, with a distinct form that magically unfolds, with quiet tension building to what feels like inevitable eruption. Together, Sorey and Crispell scale the heights of spontaneous artistic invention.

freejazzblog.org * * * * *:
“There is only one place, and that place is time.”
(Russell Hoban.)

Tyshawn Sorey’s latest album is a masterwork of a journey – an oceanic experience that begins its voyage with quiet, focused intent.

Recorded live at The Kitchen (NYC) in October 2018 it is – incredibly – only the third duo performance between the drummer/percussionist and pianist Marilyn Crispell. The respect between the two artists is musically palpable and Sorey has spoken of the pianist’s “mindful decision making, intense listening, and the profound clarity with which she creatively responds.”

The darkened hall, lit only by two dim lamps, became the space of “a meeting of two spirits on a path of sound” (Crispell) – with nothing predetermined or discussed in advance.

The opening of the journey begins with a single ‘Tok!’ of wood. A slow build, examining the parameters of the sound-space; percussion constructing a base kindling with precision and purpose – knowing its role in the coming fire. Single notes of plucked piano innards move into a gentle, eking radiance of keys and chimes. At six minutes – the first distant rumbles of thunder, listening across the expansive surface plane, feeling a growing depth; a dark storm approaching.

At fifteen minutes in, the free expulsion fully opens – the first intense dance; waves of motion and emotion – ominous, descending bass stabs and low thunderous rolls replete with metallic percussion. Before all becomes still: drum whale-calls echo into the dark depths – open expanse – compounded with a single echoing tom hit; drawing a two note piano response.

Corrugated, jarred note stabs – fed by Sorey’s cymbals – then roll deep into the dark-hued tones of the lowest keys. Snare after snare into rolling toms, Crispell crisply repetitious here, imperceptibly building drama, texture and space; excavating into pitch-dark angular time. Monolithic weight.

Not only an exploration of sound and silences, but more unexpectedly – sound and space; dark, hanging-open, vertiginous space – like being suspended from a single rope, miles off shore, over deep black water, in darkest night; suspended and adorned.

Percussive chimes lead us back to the journey – to what sounds like timbers being struck, constructing sound; as a sailor might – superstitiously – touch his head to the wooden vessel, the music here embodies the relationship between the actual materiality of its own creation, through action in space. Crispell responds with pizzicato piano strings that project the playing of a harp in a field of ripped corn. Then scratched strings sound as Sorey’s bass drum tries to burrow in beneath the floor.

At the fifty minute mark huge tympani-like rolls boom before shifting into a chain-rattled invitation where the piano graces back in; a melancholy slow dance of slow-motion tears, of glockenspiel and falling chords – a chiming dialogue in decaying time.

Suddenly, a spontaneously composed coda appears. Crispell, emanating beauty outward before a tidal wall of drums seduces one into an expected end – but the piano breaks free and shifts into a slanting, sideways barrel roll only to become drawn back into a horizon point of conclusion through an overwhelming tightening snare.

Thrillingly dynamic, the breathless finale shows just how much expanse and dense narrative drive can be elicited from just drums and piano, when in the right hands.
A complete experience.

At no point in its unbroken sixty-five minutes does The Adornment of Time meander or fall into ruminative discursion, there is always a progression in movement of improvised intent and structural logic – displayed through the sheer depth of musical communication.

Quite a journey.
By Olle Lawson

muzycy:
Tyshawn Sorey: drums, percussion
Marilyn Crispell: piano

utwory:
1. The Adornment of Sound 01:04:57
total time - 01:04:57
wydano: September 27, 2019
more info: www.pirecordings.com