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Sorey, Tyshawn / Marilyn Crispell: The Adornment of Time (Pi Recordings)

New York drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Marilyn Crispell first played toghether in 2014, this only their 3rd performance, at The Kitchen in 2018 as part of a 3-day career accomplishments series for Sorey, the two performing in the dark as they spontaneously evolve a brilliant piece of innate orchestration, color, texture, rhythm, and thematic development.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Tyshawn Sorey-drums, percussion

Marilyn Crispell-piano


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UPC: 808713008326

Label: Pi Recordings
Catalog ID: Pi 83
Squidco Product Code: 28235

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2019
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded live at The Kitchen, in New York City, New York, on October 21st, 2018, by Jonah Rosenberg and Philip White.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"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 50th anniversary 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."-Pi Recordings


Artist Biographies

"Tyshawn Sorey (born July 8, 1980 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American musician and composer who plays drum set, percussion, trombone and piano.

Since graduating from William Paterson University, Sorey has been a sought-after musician in many different musical idioms. He is both a performer and composer, and has had works reviewed in The Wire, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Modern Drummer and Down Beat. In August 2009, Sorey was given the opportunity to curate a month of performances at the Stone, a New York performance space owned by John Zorn. He was selected as an Other Minds 17 (2012).

Sorey recently completed a Master of Arts in composition at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. In the fall of 2011, he began pursuing doctoral work in composition at Columbia University.

To date, Sorey has released four albums as a leader: That/Not (2007, Firehouse 12 Records), Koan (2009, 482 Music), Oblique (2011, Pi Recordings) and Alloy (2014, Pi Recordings). He has recorded or performed with musicians including Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Steve Lehman, Joey Baron, Muhal Richard Abrams, Pete Robbins, Vijay Iyer, Dave Douglas, Butch Morris and Sylvie Courvoisier, among many others."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyshawn_Sorey)
3/31/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Marilyn Crispell is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied classical piano and composition, and has been a resident of Woodstock, New York since 1977 when she came to study and teach at the Creative Music Studio. She discovered jazz through the music of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and other contemporary jazz players and composers. For ten years she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has been a member of the Barry Guy New Orchestra and guest with his London Jazz Composers Orchestra, as well as a member of the Henry Grimes Trio, Quartet Noir (with Urs Leimgruber, Fritz Hauser and Joelle Leandre), and Anders Jormin's Bortom Quintet. In 2005 she performed and recorded with the NOW Orchestra in Vancouver, Canada and in 2006 she was co-director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute and a faculty member at the Banff Centre International Workshop in Jazz. In 2014 she led a three-week music residency at the Atlantic Center For the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and in 2016 led a one-week residency at the Conservatory Manuel de Falla in Buenos Aires.

Besides working as a soloist and leader of her own groups, Crispell has performed and recorded extensively with well-known players on the American and international jazz scene. She's also performed and recorded music by contemporary composers Robert Cogan, Pozzi Escot, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Manfred Niehaus and Anthony Davis (including four performances of his opera "X" with the New York City Opera).

In addition to playing, she has taught improvisation workshops and given lecture/demonstrations at universities and art centers in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has collaborated with videographers, filmmakers, dancers and poets.

Crispell has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grants (1988-1989, 1994-1995 and 2006-2007), a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission (1988-1989), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005-2006). In 1996 she was given an Outstanding Alumni Award by the New England Conservatory, and in 2004, was cited as being one of their 100 most outstanding alumni of the past 100 years."

-Marilyn Crispell Website (http://marilyncrispell.com/bio.htm)
3/31/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. The Adornment Of Time 1:04:52

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Percussion & Drums
Piano & Keyboards
Duo Recordings
Pi Records
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