#Spencer Crispell

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Tyshawn Sorey and Marilyn Crispell – The Adornment of Time (Pi Recordings)

Tyshawn Sorey and Marilyn Crispell – The Adornment of Time (Pi Recordings)

Pinning down the music of Tyshawn Sorey is a next-to-impossible task. He’s a first-call drummer for musicians like Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell and Steve Lehman (to name a few). He’s a challenging leader with projects like Pillars, his sprawling work for expanded ensemble bridging compositional forms and improvisation which hit many year-end lists as well as a regularly working trio that includes pianist Cory Smythe and bassist Christopher Tordini. Then there’s his compositional work including Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, a song cycle in tribute to Josephine Baker, For Bill Dixon and A. Spencer Barefield commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra, Everything Changes, Nothing Changes commissioned by the JACK Quartet or Autoschediasms, where Sorey expands on the language of Butch Morris’s “Conductions.” Adding to that, he’s a professor of music and African American Studies at Wesleyan University. And that just hits on some highlights. But somehow, through all this, he still makes time to collaborate with a diverse group of improvisers. And for anyone looking to check out those endeavors, this duo with pianist Marilyn Crispell should pop up near the top of that list.

Crispell’s activities have been equally vast starting with her participation at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY in the late 1970s. Since that time she’s established herself though her solo work, ensembles she’s led, her participation in the Anthony Braxton Quartet during the 80s and early 90s, the Reggie Workman Ensemble, projects with Barry Guy as a duo, a trio with Paul Lytton and as a member of his New Orchestra, and a plethora of others. Throughout, though, she has been drawn to the piano/drums duo format, having performed and recorded duos with percussionists including Doug James, Andrew Cyrille, Gerry Hemingway, Eddie Prevost, Thurman Barker and Louis Moholo-Moholo. In a recent Downbeat interview, Crispell said “[The piano] is a percussion instrument: You have hammers striking strings, and I definitely relate to it in that way. Especially at the beginning when I was doing a lot of pure energy music… I relate very much to rhythms, playing different rhythms against the drums. I love doing that.” This expansive duo with Sorey, recorded live at The Kitchen in New York in October 2018 is a dazzling addition.  

The two had played together a few times previous to this concert and they hit the extended hour-long improvisation with an immediate focus. In his liner notes, Sorey says, “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.” The two open with an extended section of spare percussive thwacks of wood, tuned drums and bells and darkly resounding piano notes and abraded strings. They intuitively sync into a patiently unfolding momentum, with masterful control of attack and sustain, letting their sounds hang with a reflective sense of pace and dynamics.  

Crispell’s pricks of upper register piano notes and Sorey’s metallic ringing chimes gradually emerge, piercing the soundscape into which they interject the low rumble of bass drum and resonant piano chords. Crispell hints at the abstract lyricism she has favored of late, but opens things up, letting the free harmonies sit with a potent resolve. That notion of “mindful decision making” is evident throughout as the two build measured waves of tension and release. The way they steadily mount to crescendos of dynamics and density and abate into sections of extended composure is riveting. Half-way in, the two open up to a more vigorous give-and-take, with Sorey’s thundering drums and shimmering chimes intertwined with Crispell’s stabbing chords and angular cascades of notes. What is particularly striking is how organically this emerges from what has proceeded. That effortless integration of driving intensity and imperturbable, introspective composure has been wholly assimilated into their collective playing.  

For the final third of the improvisation, the two ramp down the densities and dynamics to bracing effect, particularly around 45 minutes in with a section of skittering detail of Sorey’s exacting percussion that segues into the harp-like chime of Crispell’s inside-piano playing. The two spontaneously morph the arc of the piece, coalescing around their respective timbral palettes. That absorbed collective listening imbues this final section as Crispell slowly moves towards a pensive lyricism melding flawlessly with Sorey’s spare chiming percussion. The two seize on this, slowing the pace while maintaining a gripping weight to their playing. In the final minutes, the dynamics and density well up again to an exhilarating crescendo breaking telepathically into inky silence, underscoring the commanding empathy the two have woven over the preceding hour.  

Michael Rosenstein

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Students Nominated to Service Academies

Students Nominated to Service Academies

Pictured are Jeremy Bone, left, Ian Corey (nominated by Sen. Barbara Mikulski last year), Peyton Plummer, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, Spencer Crispell, Mary Kamon, Ethan Aus, and Nicholas Austell. Eleven students from Maryland’s 5th District have been nominated to attend US service academies by Rep. Steny H. Hoyer. They were honored at a reception June 20 at the Library of Congress. The students have…