Album Review: Tyshawn Sorey- Pillars

Leaf blowers and Pillars are incompatible.  My plan for the daylight hours last weekend was to absorb Tyshawn Sorey’s four-hour epic while doing yard work.  The rudimentary process of gathering and bagging the deep bed of leaves that covers my yard would have allowed me to focus on the intricacies of Sorey’s new triptych.

No dice.

Equipped with blaring leaf blowers, my diligent neighbors glared at me as I made my first attempt of the season to clear my yard with a rake.  The infernal racket of their machines drowned out the hushed segments of Pillars.  I retreated indoors.  Hearing Sorey’s crucial work is far more important to me than keeping up appearances.  Although Sorey is best known in jazz circles, Pillars is in the tradition of classical-based compositions by the likes of Anthony Davis and John Cage. 

The irony of my travails: a few of the most abrasive passages of Pillars resemble the grating drone of leaf blowers.


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Recently at Plastic Sax: I reviewed OJT’s New Originals for the Green Lady and experienced an astonishing epiphany at the Kansas City debut of Kamasi Washington.

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I write weekly concert previews for The Kansas City Star.

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Unlike many jazz devotees, I don't revere Roy Hargrove.  I was nonplussed the first time I saw him at a St. Louis club in the early 1990s.  And he was a mess the last time I caught him at the 2014 edition of the 18th & Vine Jazz & Blues Festival.  When he was on, however, Hargrove was among the best artists I’ve witnessed.  I reviewed Hargrove’s band at the Folly Theater for The Kansas City Star, a show that I ranked second on a list of my favorite concerts of 2007.  Hargrove died November 2.

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The Residents’ Hardy Fox has died.

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Elle King often sings about the people who do her wrong.  She should direct her righteous fury at the knob-twiddlers responsible for the wrongheaded production of Shake the Spirit.  Much as the recordings of Fitz and the Tantrums sterilize the band’s retro-soul attack, Shake the Spirit is rendered lifeless by a sound field that makes her Wanda Jackson-esque attack sound like Pat Boone.  Here’s “Shame”.

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Even though I have little patience for astrology, Nao’s pseudo-science themed Saturn captivates me.  RIYL: Janet Jackson at her weirdest, horoscopes, Frank Ocean at his most conventional.  Here’s “Make It Out Alive”.

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After Caroline, 43 minutes of delicious skronk by Jason Stein’s Locksmith Isadore, is RIYL Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet, Evan Parker.

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Vince Staples’ FM! mixtape is disappointing.  Here’s “Fun!”.

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A commendable album is hiding underneath multiple layers of sticky varnish on Carrie Underwood’s Cry Pretty.  Here’s “Love Wins”.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)