This version of Fieldwork is the trio of pianist Vijay Iyer (the only remaining player from the band’s 2002 debut), alto saxophonist Steve Lehman, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. The group last released an album in 2008, and since then, each musician has become a vital leader and composer in the creative music scene. Accolades include: MacArthur Fellowships for both Iyer and Sorey, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Lehman, and a Pulitzer Prize in music for Sorey. They have moved in different directions across a diverse scene, creating music that encompasses hip-hop, classical “new music”, intuitive piano trios, shimmering spectral music, and more. In short, this is even more plainly a trio of heavyweights in 2025.
The new album, Thereupon, is, however, better described as buoyant and open than as “heavy”. It builds upon the idea that animated the three previous recordings: that daring music in the jazz tradition can be propulsive and carefully structured even as it radically expands that tradition. However, it is also the best of the four albums: ferociously focused and remarkably accessible for music that remains abstract and harmonically dense.
When I reviewed Door in 2008, I was impressed by its power and brilliance, but I felt compelled to inform readers that the music was not “easy” to listen to; appreciating it might require some mental effort. Now, even in an era when our collective attention spans and tolerance for non-pop culture seem desperately weakened, I feel that Thereupon needs no warning. With only one track exceeding five minutes, and with a focus on melody and steady (if complex) grooves, this music reaches out and grabs your ears.
Let’s focus on “Fantome” (written by Lehman, though the trio created every arrangement), which finds Iyer playing Fender Rhodes electric piano, generating a sycopated bass part at the start as Sorey tumbles into a funky, firm accompaniment. The pianist improvises a twisting but tonal single-note line above the bass line. Then Lehman’s light and piquant alto enters with a melody that includes composed elements, one of which is a set of insistently repeated notes — a pattern that Sorey’s drums play along with, sometimes in exact “unison” and sometimes in sycopated reaction.
It’s legitimate fun (and, as the kids would say, low-key danceable) to dig this interplay — only to have Sorey and Iyer gradually empty the sonic space to let the saxophone play a series of spinning melodic lines that include distinctive licks that rise in tiny microtonal intervals. Iyer echoes them, and the production adds a faint dash of echo as Fieldwork whisper the track to a sensual close.
Is it then intentional that the next track, Lehman’s “Astral”, echoes the compositional tic of having each of the three musicians occasionally play repeated-note patterns that remind us of “Fantome”? In the second half of the song, the trio lock into an almost entirely composed theme that is syncopated in the manner of a great Earth, Wind & Fire horn part. The intervallic leaps of the melody and the clarity of the musicians’ precise playing are sure to evoke a “Woo!” in live audiences.
This kind of groove-forward sound for a band that is trading in jagged or shifting time signatures is, of course, the work of Tyshawn Sorey. If you are a fan of jazz ancestors like Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, and Jeff Watts (or, dare I say, Dennis Chambers and Steve Gadd?) — drummers who brought rock and funk elements to daring jazz bands, then you will lap us the way Sorey turns Fieldwork into a playground.
The first two tracks (Iyer’s “Propaganda” and Lehman’s “Embracing Difference”) are rave-ups. Strong melodic material that can be repeated in cycles is set ablaze by Sorey snapping snare precision and his kick-drum bass lines — the latter being too sharp and tonal that you are forgiven for forgetting that Fieldwork doesn’t have a bass player. Lehman improvises during gaps in the “head” arrangement of the second of this two-tune cycle, then he shares a section of improvising with Iyer, not “trading” fours in the traditional sense, but engaging in a spirited, largely ecstatic conversation.
Some of the material here is even more accessible to traditional “jazz fans” than these opening groovers. “Domain” (a Lehman theme) begins with a cycling bit, an extended technique for solo alto saxophone. Still, as the trio enter, a clear written melody emerges from the horn before the tumbling rhythm is suspended to allow Lehman to play a winsome bird-call three-note lick in the high register of his horn. Fieldwork solo over the structure as surely as if they were playing “All the Things You Are”.
Iyer’s “Evening Rite” is in a skipping 5/4 time, only a bit trickier than “Take Five” and features a unison melody by piano and saxophone that is bright and optimistic. The improvising features spins and restructuring of the theme, the kind of blues-based bebop that Paul Desmond once made so singable, but neither is it the ouch-my-ears avant-garde. Even “Fire City”, which begins with a more chaotic section of free blowing, resolves into a big melodic gesture.
The longest performance on Thereupon is the moody closing track “The Night Before” by Iyer. It is another demonstration of how Fieldwork has matured over the last 17 years. Iyer’s Rhodes piano, Sorey’s cymbals, and Lehman’s feathery tone are mixed into a haunting soundscape that can reasonably be called beautiful. There are some lush chords, but they are used sparingly, and the saxophone melody that emerges halfway through the eight minutes could bear lyrics.
Not that Fieldwork suddenly birthed a slice of smooth jazz, of course. The harmonies are open, and the feeling is more mysterious than romantic, but this is another example of how Thereupon is the album that sounds most mature, focused, and accessible to the uninitiated.
Perhaps this extraordinary few Fieldwork recording sounds so centered simply because the music of Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, and Tyshawn Sorey has had a significant influence on the broader sound of jazz over the last two decades. After all, Iyer has been nominated three times for a Grammy (not exactly a voting body that exemplifies the cutting edge), and Sorey’s recent trio (playing some standards and popular songs, yes, but doing so in a discursive, non-pop manner) has been featured at festivals.
The language that these musicians learned during their time playing with figures like Henry Threadgill and Steve Coleman has evolved through jazz, helping it to find a way to thrive beyond the limits of post-bop orthodoxy. That motion is, of course, a significant part of their legacy.
As a result, Fieldwork’s Thereupon comes less as a vanguard voice than as an expression of where the “New Jazz” is in 2025. With its influences from new classical music, polyrhythmic world music, hip-hop, rock, soul, and jazz, carefully integrated through the early 2000s, this music seems closer to a summation of a distinct approach to Black improvised music, particularly in the context of “jazz” today. It doesn’t shock my ears, but it still thrills and pleases them.