Drummer Tyshawn Sorey

Drummer Tyshawn Sorey is perhaps best known for his spectacular performances in which he toys with rhythms as though they are Play-Doh, drives angular and dramatic improvisation with a machine-like and confounding propulsion, or rips drum heads open with his sticks. Koan, which features a suite composed by Sorey, is surprising for someone expecting the explosiveness usually associated with the juggernaut drummer.

Joining Sorey are bassist Thomas Morgan and guitarist Todd Neufeld. A question raised throughout the album is “where are the drums?” Sorey’s playing often adds up to a subtle effect, and it seems as though he is exploring the margins of the just noticeable difference between audibility and inaudibility. In some cases, as in the track “Two Guitars,” the effect is achieved by simply not playing at all. On that piece, Morgan switches to guitar. He and Neufeld use nylon strings to improvise a dialogue that seems to take its cue from some arrangement of naturally occurring sounds.

The last track on the album, “Embed,” is one that seems the most like a song. That is, the pulse is constantly decipherable, and there are traces of conventional linear melodies. In keeping with the theme of the suite, however, it is glacial in tempo, and colored with delicate dissonances. The lentor of the material on Koan is its central characteristic, allowing the beauty of the compositions to be absorbed. It may also present the biggest challenge to listeners who aren’t accustomed to the type of performance that is meant to shed light on places where music occurs but where we don’t typically look. Sorey is grasping for the exposure of music that finds itself in the penumbra of slowness, in the way that composer Morton Feldman tended to explore music veiled in quietness. That’s not the only link between Sorey and Feldman’s music. Both stir up similar pensive moods, and a similar sense of pristine disorientation.

Koan is an album that needs to be given ample space and time for appreciation. Listening to it half-heartedly would risk mistaking the periods when it verges on silence for periods of actual silence. It is perhaps best enjoyed when in a meditative state, or when acquiring such a state is desired.
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