This live recording brings together four of New York’s finest jazz musicians in an intimate and fluid performance combining masterful skills and musicality. It’s a real treat to be in on the action.
The Fury is a super-group of top New York talent whose names may not be so familiar in the United Kingdom. Drummer Tyshawn Sorey won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music and is a MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius Grant’ recipient. He appeared with his trio at the 2024 London Jazz Festival in a Kings Place show which also featured bassist Matt Brewer, a band leader in his own right. Guitarist Lage Lund is a past winner of the Thelonious Monk competition and was the first jazz guitarist to be admitted to the Julliard School of Music. Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner has a distinguished string of albums to his name both as a leader and sideman. This is a line-up to be relished.
Giant Step Arts, an innovative artist-focused non-profit, invited the group to make an initial recording over two shows at the Ornithology club in Brooklyn in August 2023. The group took their name from the 1929 William Faulkner novel The Sound and the Fury – which in turn is a nod to Shakespeare’s Macbeth – and they certain deliver sound-wise. The music opens with Like A Flower Seeking The Sun from the pen of fellow New Yorker and saxophonist Myron Walden. It sets the standard for what’s to come, a sinuous melody performed with restraint by Turner with the rhythm section delightfully together-yet-fluid. Lage Lund solos first, his light touch riding the superbly driven waves from Brewer and Sorey; the whole thing is a masterclass in how to be full of sound without necessarily being furious. Turner steps forward to solo – his sound has been compared to cool schooler Warne Marsh and he, like Lund, delivers with panache and restraint. Brewer takes a turn on bass and shows himself as equal to the others with Sorey providing the lightest of imaginative punctuations.
The remaining six numbers are written by band members and continue the overall feel. Matt Brewer’s Of Our Time is a ballad with Lund almost sounding like a Rhodes piano in supporting the tune. Mark Turner provides the skittish Ender’s Game which lets Sorey show just how fast and cleanly he can ride his cymbals, flittering between single and double time so often that we give up caring and just get swept along; there are moments of sublime connectedness as sax and guitar go from chordal to fugal and back. Lund bring three numbers; Couch has a swagger and a phrase reminding me of Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood, Jimbo is an intricate theme with bass and sax interplay, and Vignette has a quiet swing with Brewer dropping into epic walking bass from time to time. The album closes with Mark Turner’s Sonnet For Stevie, Brewer’s bass getting a welcome chance to take the lead.
This is engrossing music of the highest quality. Everyone is switched-on all the time, and Sorey’s drums in particular are an ever-present support and encouragement to the group process. The group are back at Ornithology this month to record more, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop as a collective.
