(Avant-Garde Jazz, Structured Improvisation, Modern Classical) [CD] Tyshawn Sorey - Verisimilitude - 2017, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Tyshawn Sorey – Drums, percussion
Cory Smythe – Piano, toy piano, electronics
Chris Tordini - Bass

AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
For years now, drummer and composer Tyshawn Sorey has built a substantial body of work that continually challenges genre designations between jazz, classical music, and improvisation by paying little heed to what separates them. For him, they are part of an inseparable whole feeding one another endlessly. Sorey's unpredictability and disregard for convention continue on Verisimilitude. After releasing the sprawling, universally acclaimed The Inner Spectrum of Variables, wherein he expanded his trio with pianist Corey Smythe and bassist Chris Tordini to a sextet by adding a trio of string players, he returns to the smaller configuration here.
A common thread among the five works here is, as always, the blurring of lines that exist -- at least for the listener -- between composed and improvised music. This trio has been together for four years; they hear one another on exceptionally subtle levels. This is amply evident in their interplay; their engagement is complete, and their collective language, though sometimes sparse and spare, is never static; something is always transpiring, even in the quieter sections. The overall mood is somber, dark, and mysterious. In addition, restraint (in the Morton Feldman-esque sense of the term) is the M.O. here, even when motion is at its most kinetic and the music gets dense.
Opener "Cascade in Slow Motion," is the shortest piece here at just under five minutes. (The rest are over ten with one over 30.) It commences just as its title suggests, with a small cascade of piano notes. Smythe establishes a pattern, followed expressionistically by Tordini with Sorey expanding the music's parameters with fills, rolls, and accents until Tordini enters arco to articulate its close. "Obsidian" expends four of its 18 minutes with dark, ambient electronic sounds and noises, with Tordini adding dissonant, sparse arco lines as tonal contrast. Smythe brings in the piano at about five minutes with ghost chords and single notes. Sorey enters with a gong and stumbling tom-toms, while Tordini adds elegantly bowed contrabass. The whole dissolves into near nothingness before Sorey re-engages. The dynamic becomes explosive two-thirds of the way through before unmaking itself again with the resonance of a Tibetan bowl, ambient electronics, and treated bowed bass. By contrast, the half-hour "Algid November" sounds like almost pure abstraction. Percussion and strategically placed bass notes pace along a cymbal shimmer and piano chords for a long time. The music is never less than utterly compelling. When the pace eventually increases, a post-bop intensity takes hold, and it's transformative. Verisimilitude is a major entry in Sorey's catalog. It moves from strength to strength and never forsakes its mandate to unfold at its own pace. Consequently, it will continue to delight listeners because it will never completely disclose all of its secrets.

Tyshawn Sorey: Verisimilitude ****1/2
By KARL ACKERMANN
August 6, 2017
So much has been said and written about Tyshawn Sorey's presence as a composer, performer and educator, that there is a threat of redundancy, even in adding new superlatives. Each release, however, demands attention to his exceptional and unmatched creativity. Putting aside Sorey's leader dates for the moment, those who have sought him out as a colleague, constitute a who's-who of outstanding creative artists. Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Steve Lehman, Roscoe Mitchell, Craig Taborn, Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubrock and Vijay Iyer have all drawn on Sorey's skills. As a leader, Verismilitude is Sorey's sixth release, all unprecedented in their own way.
Verisimilitude follows The Inner Spectrum of Variables (Pi, 2016) an album that featured classical composition and improvisation. Both albums included Sorey's regular collaborators, pianist Cory Smythe and bassist Christopher Tordini, but The Inner Spectrum... featured a trio of string players that obviously influenced the dynamics of the music. The five pieces on Verisimilitude were derived from performances at The Village Vanguard and The Newport Jazz Festival and reflect a trio that has developed an aptitude for diagramming their music without stifling independence.
Verisimilitude is dark, not in an ominous way, but in a cagey, intentionally destabilized manner where things are sometimes different than they first appear -there are instances where the trio may play part of a score backwards as experimentation. "Cascade in Slow Motion"—the only track under ten minutes—sets a tone for the album in that it is a series of textural motions that set a mood. The thirty-minute epic "Algid November," despite its restraint, is a fascinatingly complex work. The trio interprets Sorey's composition with equal parts of profound beauty and perplexing tractability. "Contemplating Tranquility" is an unlikely combination of meditative and industrial, its drone often with a metallic property, countered by the delicacy of high pitched bells.
There is a trance-like quality to Verisimilitude but it is infused with sanguine sense of purpose. Sorey, Smythe and Tordini are perfectly happy to lead us down blind alleys with a less than straight-forward step. Perhaps, Sorey's greatest talent is in his ability to inspire both his bandmates and his audience without showing his hand. Verismilitude will deservedly end up on many best-of lists.

Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 27. July 2017, 18:13
Tyshawn Sorey / Verisimilitude
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