Tyshawn Sorey Trio + 1: The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism

On his mid-2022 studio album, Mesmerism, drummer/percussionist and MacArthur “genius” Fellow Tyshawn Sorey sidestepped away from the experimentalism of 2018’s Pillars and toward the Great American songbook. The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism follows a similar path. This 3-CD set documents Sorey performing with pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Russell Hall, and alto saxophonist Greg Osby at the Jazz Gallery in New York City in March 2022. The repertoire covers many eras of jazz, from Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz” to Thelonious Monk’s “Ask Me Now,” McCoy Tyner’s “Contemplation,” Miles Davis’ “Solar,” and Ornette Coleman’s “Mob Job.” Whether taking off from swing, bebop, hard-bop, modal, or harmolodic sources or extrapolating from playful and romantic melodies such as “Three Little Words,” “Night and Day,” and “Chelsea Bridge,” the quartet pries open the harmonies and meters and puts its own stamp on every tune. Inventive expression and instrumental virtuosity abound, most commandingly in Osby’s burnished tone and spiraling solos and Diehl’s crisp runs and Tyner-esque rhapsodic thunder, more subtly in Hall’s and Sorey’s supportive rhythmic partnership at every tempo. Each moment of these four hours of live acoustic jazz feels exhilaratingly fresh and new.