Music of Today: Tyshawn Sorey

Programme

Composer. Performer. Pioneer. Enter the genre-crossing musical world of one of America’s foremost musical polymaths: Tyshawn Sorey.

2018’s Autoschediasms instantly plunges the listener into a world of charged intensity and perfectly introduces Sorey’s explosive shattering of traditional musical boundaries. A totally improvised piece, the music instead unfolds through the conductor’s gestures, markers on paper and the creative explorations between the musicians themselves.

For Bill Dixon and A. Spencer Barefield is a complete contrast. Introspective and subtle, the music spreads like whispers across the ensemble, led by the trumpet and electric guitar. Written in tribute to two experimental jazz icons that inspired Sorey, the piece warmly acknowledges its influences and fuses their sounds into something entirely new.

To open the programme, Sorey conducts the music of a fellow American musical trailblazer. Active as a trombonist and composer, George Lewis has performed with the likes of Count Basie, Anthony Braxton and Gil Evans. His 2011 work The Will to Adorn opens tonight’s programme with an intense, dynamic atmosphere, through constantly shifting percussive rhythms balanced against complex harmonies.