Members… Don’t!

Track List

Abstrustions

  0:13

Effi

  18:42

Absolutions

  12:06

Equipoise (Part 1)

  8:15

Equipoise (Part 2)

  18:05

Libra

  10:59

Members, Don't Git Weary

  14:39

Members… Don’t! is the tour-de-force new release by acclaimed drummer and composer Tyshawn Sorey that offers a bold reinterpretation of Max Roach’s potent album Members, Don’t Git Weary, connecting its message of resilience in the face of struggle to the present day. It follows on a string of albums from Sorey that feature pianist Aaron Diehl, the latest of which – The Susceptible Now (Pi 2024) – received 5-Stars from Downbeat, which describe it as “a garden of sonic ecstasy… Sorey’s trio conjures a spell that enchants throughout the entire album…. Each [track] seduces with the power of sauntering dance, flickering melodicism and emotional immediacy.”

Roach’s album – recorded during the turbulent year of 1968 and shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and amid widespread social unrest – served as a call for perseverance in the fight for justice. Its title track, drawn from the Negro spiritual “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning,” serves as both admonition and encouragement. Coming eight years after the release of his landmark We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, with the murders of John F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X, the escalation of the Vietnam War and even the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 occurring in the intervening years, the album serves as a resolute reminder of continued, collective commitment.

Nearly six decades later, Members… Don’t! returns to that gesture. Expansive in scope and searching in intent, Sorey reimagines Roach’s work, not as repertoire, but reframed through a contemporary lens, reshaped and reimagined for our own turbulent time. He magnifies the original – with compositions by pianist Stanley Cowell, alto saxophonist Gary Bartz, and bassist Jymie Merrit, joined by trumpeter Charles Tolliver – into a lengthy suite. He cites the extended works of Charles Mingus such as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and Epitaph as particular inspirations. Like much of his recent works – best exemplified by performance practices with his trio and on the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) – Sorey invites listeners into immersive environments that unfold gradually, revealing their logic and emotional core over extended duration. It’s music that resists excerpting; asking for patience and a willingness to give oneself to the narrative’s unfolding. Sorey re-sequenced the original’s compositions so that the title piece “Member, Don’t Git Weary” becomes the work’s denouement. “For me, it’s the apex,” Sorey said. “Everything else leads to that moment.”

Recorded live at the end of a four-night engagement at New York’s Jazz Gallery, the group – Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mark Shim on tenor saxophone, Lex Korten on piano, and Tyrone Allen on bass – maneuvers through the music’s precarious turbulence with virtuosity and inspiration. Across eight performances, the ensemble refined its approach, navigating its intricate formal design while sustaining the dynamic, responsive interplay that reflects Sorey’s broader artistic practice. The ensemble gradually accumulates intensity before arriving at the album’s shattering climax, delivered in an ecstatic turn by vocalist Fay Victor that resonates with the spiritual and communal dimensions of Roach’s original while asserting a distinct and contemporary voice. It’s a performance that is at once grounded and searching, drawing on gospel idioms while extending beyond them as if visited by the Holy Ghost. Her performance echoes the role played by Andy Bey in Roach’s original, but it also reframes it, emphasizing not only exhortation but vulnerability. The effect is cumulative: by the time the piece reaches its full density, it carries the weight of everything that has preceded it.

Members… Don’t! is just one aspect of Sorey’s ongoing musical exploration. During the 2025-26 season, Sorey’s projects include multiple premieres: the piano concerto For Marilyn Crispell, by Aaron Diehl and the Philadelphia Orchestra; For Julius Eastman by pianist Sarah Rothenberg; Largo (For Quincy C. Hilliard) by the American Brass Quintet; Capriccio for Violin Alone by Johnny Gandelsman; and For Bill Frisell by guitarist Sean Shibe. He brought his opera Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine to the Adelaide Festival, with further performances this fall at the Paris Opera. The recording of Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) saw its release on Dacamera Editions and will see its European premiere at the Barbican in London. His For jaimie branch was just released by TAK Ensemble. Sorey saw continued performances of his stage collaboration Longing to Tell with Akua Naru and Ensemble Resonanz in Europe and his Trio’s joint tribute to Max Roach with Sandbox Percussion. He has upcoming shows with his Trio with Aaron Diehl and Harish Raghavan and with Peter Evans’ Being and Becoming. His two performances at the Big Ears Festival included a mind-bending reunion with maestro Roscoe Mitchell. He was named a 2024 Pew Fellow.

If Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary articulated a response to the crises of its moment, Sorey’s Members… Don’t! engages a present that remains, in many ways, similarly unsettled. Without drawing direct parallels, the work acknowledges a continuity of experience—of tension, resilience, and the ongoing negotiation of meaning within an ever-shifting social, political and cultural landscape that nonetheless remains stubbornly unchanged in so many ways. This is not music that soothes and consoles; it is music that insists on the necessity of carrying something forward even when its destination is unclear; an affirmation that, in times of crisis and turmoil, we all must remain resolute and persist “for the work mos done.”