The Susceptible Now is the fourth album of American Tyshawn Sorey Trio, featuring drummer (and scholar, educator and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Foundation) Sorey, new double bass player Harish Raghavan (who replaced Matt Brewer), and pianist Aaron Diehl, all are composers and bandleaders in their own right.
As on previous albums of the trio, it offers thoughtful and extended covers of Sorey’s favorite pieces that he calls the «Living Great American Songbook». Sorey’s arrangements deconstruct these pieces through extraction and shuffling of sections, changing keys, harmonic sequences, and progressions while arranging them into unpredictable song forms, and making them his own. Sorey chooses not to take a solo, but his poetic playing suggests an imaginative commentary that subtly pushes the music forward and reins it back. The trio plays with an exquisite focus on every nuance, touch, or phrase as if each sound and note means the whole world.
The trio opens with a 15-minute, reflexive version of McCoy Tyner’s «Peresina» from his album Expansions (Blue Note, 1969). It was the first Tyner album Sorey was exposed to, and it spoke to him in a deeply spiritual way. The trio distills the melodic outlines of this classic, beautiful piece with great precision and a captivating groove.
The second piece is a surprising one, a 23-minute version of Charles Mingus and Joni Mitchell’s «A Chair in the Sky» from Mitchell’s Mingus (Asylum, 1979. Mingus wrote the music and Mitchell wrote the lyrics), which Sorey first encountered while watching Don McGlynn’s documentary Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog (1997). This minimalist and introspective, lyrical arrangement, with impressive, economical but always elegant solos of Diel and Raghavan, faithfully corresponds with the melancholic spirit of the Mingus album, when the great master was coming to terms with his untimely death.
Another surprising choice for a cover is the 27-minute cover of the electro-soul Vividry’s «Your Good Lies» (penned by Daniel Gunnarsson), introduced to Sorey by his daughter. This pop gem was recomposed, arranged, reharmonized, melodically altered, and adapted for a spontaneous, hypnotic ballad that cleverly ornamented its intoxicating motif.
The last piece is a 15-minute version of Brad Mehldau’s «Bealtine» from his trio album House On Hill (Nonesuch, 2006), dedicated to drum historian Anthony Amadeo, a dear friend of Sorey’s. This is an uplifting, hard-swinging piece, performed in the similar evocative treatment of John Coltrane Quartet’s readings of «My Favorite Things» and Muhal Richard Abrams and Malachi Favors’ reading of Abrams’ «Two Over One».
The four pieces are played without breaks, magnifying the trio’s focused intensity that attaches a tone poem’s sensibility to the brilliant, profound interpretations of the Sorey Trio.
Eyal Hareuveni
Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Aaron Diehl (piano), Harish Raghavan (double bass)
