Tyshawn Sorey: Total Recall The career of musician and drummer, Tyshawn Sorey, continues to soar after working in ensembles led by Butch Morris, Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Dave Douglas and Vijay Iyer, and the approaching release of his debut album.
by Ted Panken
"He reminded me of Art Tatum," Steve Coleman said of his initial encounter with drummer Tyshawn Sorey at Manhattan's Jazz Gallery several years ago. At the time, Sorey was only 22.
It is rare to mention the mega-virtuoso pianist in the same breath as even his fellow immortals on the timeline, much less a drummer just out of college. So Coleman had to elaborate.
"Tyshawn is well-schooled, but without a schooled sound," Coleman said a week before touring Europe with a two-drum-set ensemble including Sorey and Marcus Gilmore. "He doesn't play clichés. He would have fit in during the loft scene days, but he has much more command of structure than most guys who were psychologically on that thing. He can handle any Structure or rhythm I ever could dream up, make it fit and get wild on it."
"Steve gives specific rhythmic instructions, and I try to be creative with that information," said Sorey. Describing his process, "I'll use my hands to play a rhythm that was initially assigned to my feet, and then vice versa. Sometimes I'll play something completely away from that rhythm, figure it out metrically and do whatever I want. I'm interested in the sound of rhythm on the drum set, not necessarily any one particular lineage. I want to feel its beauty. I want to transcend the instrument. That keeps it interesting to me and the listener- and the musicians."
Since he hit the scene in 2001, Sorey, now 26, has brought his skills to ensembles led by Butch Morris, Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Dave Douglas and Vijay Iyer. The drummer recorded his debut, the two-disc Thai/Not (Firehouse 12), earlier this year. It will be released in November.
"He has perfect pitch and seemingly total recall," Iyer said. "My first session with him, we tried a new piece with stuff that even I couldn't really execute. He looked at the page for 30 seconds and gave it back. Because he hears at that level, he can be creative in any situation; he can engage with anybody and spin it all into gold."
Playing with Abrams' quartet in May, Sorey orchestrated the flow with self-assurance. After a powerful crescendoing duo with Abrams, Sorey stated a crisp 4/4 on the ride cymbal and placed texturally contrasting accents on the toms and snare, constantly shifting ideas. He bowed his cymbals to extract harmonics, stopped, deliberately took apart his crash cymbal and reassembled it so that the concave bottoms faced outward, elicited more harmonics, transformed his body and the floor into percussion instruments, then re-established B tempo on the bass and snare drums.
The connection between Sony and Abrams goes back a ways. When a teenage Sorey was gigging in New Jersey club bands and church units, he discovered Abrams' 1968 record Levels And Degrees Of Light.
"That turned my world upside-down," Sorey said. "I also play piano, trombone and mallet instruments, and the concept of multi-instrumentalism intrigued me. I checked out electronic music and music by Xenakis. Stockhausen and John Cage. Through Cage, I eventually stretched to the point where anything in the rhythm could constitute some sound element. I listened to Andrew Cyrille's sounds on recordings with Cecil Taylor, the direction the AACM guys took with form. Coltrane's later music with Rashid Ali, Albert Ayler's recordings. I started to understand more about the discipline of improvisation, how my relationship with the musicians manifests through the music itself."
In composing for his own ensembles, Sorey tries to line his own genius based on those ideas.
"I want to keep the audience guessing, and not label me as some free-jazz guy, or some textural guy, or some guy who is crazy and can do all these things," he said. "No matter what style of music I'm playing I want people to say, 'That's Tyshawn Sorey." That's where I'm at right now, and I hope to stay there."
