Tyshawn Sorey

Tyshawn Sorey functions as drummer, pianist, composer, and educator while delivering expressive performances and recordings that encompass modern creative jazz, vanguard classical pieces, and experimental rock. His acute sensitivity maintains equilibrium between a measured method built on sparse, intimate, interconnected textures and tonalities and an impulse toward dissonant, noisy, frictional exchanges. He first presented this balance on the 2007 release That/Not, then continued to introduce or remove components across later recordings. The 2016 double-disc The Inner Spectrum of Variables employed an unconventional string quartet to examine his contemporary classical conceptions. Verisimilitude, issued in 2017, effectively dissolved distinctions separating modern classical composition from jazz improvisation. On the triple-length Pillars of 2018 he directed a septet. The following year brought the duo recording The Adornment of Time with pianist Marilyn Crispell. In March 2021 he served as one of three alternating pianists on saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh’s Facets, and the next month he joined Vijay Iyer’s Uneasy. That same year he also issued For George Lewis in partnership with the Alarm Will Sound orchestra. In 2022 he released Mesmerism, directing a swinging jazz trio completed by pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer through covers and standards. He followed with the live triple-disc The Off Off Broadway Guide to Synergism, which featured the same trio alongside saxophonist Greg Osby. He closed the year with New Now, an avant-garde trio album recorded with David Liebman and Adam Rudolph. Continuing appeared in 2023 and marked a return to the studio with Diehl and Brewer. For the 2024 ECM album Compassion, Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh formed pianist Iyer’s trio. In October of that year Sorey, pianist Diehl, and bassist Harish Raghavan released The Susceptible Now.

Born in Newark in 1980, Sorey earned an undergraduate degree from William Paterson University and a Master of Arts in Composition from Wesleyan University. He pursued doctoral studies in composition at Columbia University and has instructed at the School for Improvisational Music, the New School, and Wesleyan University. He currently holds the position of Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

Beyond his own projects, Sorey maintains regular membership in trumpeter Dave Douglas’ Nomad ensemble and saxophonist Steve Coleman’s Five Elements band. Additional performance credits include work with Wadada Leo Smith, Misha Mengelberg, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Myra Melford, and Anthony Braxton, among others.

As a leader Sorey first appeared on record with 2007’s That/Not and followed it with Koan in 2009. Several trio albums with pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock include the 2010 release Paradoxical Frog. On Pi Recordings he issued the classically oriented Oblique - I in 2011 and Alloy in 2014. The Doris Duke Foundation Performing Arts Awards presented him with its Impact Award in 2015. His fifth album, the 2016 double-disc The Inner Spectrum of Variables, presented his writing for piano trio and string trio. Verisimilitude, released in 2017, extended his practice of dissolving boundaries between composition and improvisation and brought a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. The three-part Pillars arrived in 2018. In fall 2019 he and pianist Marilyn Crispell issued The Adornment of Time, a single sixty-four-minute improvisation captured almost exactly one year earlier at The Kitchen in New York City. Also in 2019 he participated in guitarist Lage Lund’s quartet alongside bassist Larry Grenadier and pianist Sullivan Fortner on the Criss Cross Jazz album Terrible Animals. He composed and performed “In Memoriam, Muhal Richard Abrams” for Jennifer Koh’s Cedille Records collection Limitless: Duos Performed with the Composers.

Collaborations continued through 2020. He played drums in organist Radam Schwartz’s sextet on Conspiracy for Positivity: Magic Tales and recorded the joint project Invisible Ritual with violinist Jen Curtis. In March he released the digital-only Unfiltered, a two-hour three-part suite for sextet captured in one live session at Firehouse 12 by Nick Lloyd and Greg DiCrosta; the ensemble comprised vibraphonist Sasha Berliner, saxophonists Nathan Reising and Morgan Guerin, pianist Lex Korten, and bassist Nick Dunston. With electric guitarist Mike Sopko and bassist Bill Laswell he created On Common Ground, a freely improvised session modeled on the original rock power trios Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. March 2021 again found him alternating on piano in duets with saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh for Facets. April brought the ECM trio recording Uneasy, co-billed to Vijay Iyer and Linda May Han Oh. In September he released For George Lewis, a tribute to the trombonist and composer realized with the Alarm Will Sound orchestra. July 2022 saw the return to swinging post-bop on Mesmerism, a trio date with pianist Aaron Diehl and double bassist Matt Brewer containing interpretations of works by Duke Ellington, Muhal Richard Abrams, Horace Silver, and Paul Motian together with Great American Songbook standards. October brought the live triple-length The Off Off Broadway Guide to Synergism with the same trio and saxophonist Greg Osby, again using standards as departure points for extended, frequently fiery improvisation. New Now, recorded with percussionist Adam Rudolph and saxophonist David Liebman, appeared that December.

In 2023 Sorey became a Pulitzer Prize in Music finalist for the composition Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), which had premiered on February 19, 2022, at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. June brought Continuing on Pi Recordings from the Tyshawn Sorey Trio with Brewer and Diehl, offering a counterpart to Mesmerism that included a reading of Matt Dennis’ standard “Angel Eyes” plus pieces by the recently deceased Wayne Shorter, Ahmad Jamal, and Sorey’s mentor Harold Mabern. February 2024 placed drummer Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh as pianist Iyer’s rhythm section on the co-billed Compassion for ECM. A few months later he received the Pulitzer Prize for Adagio (For Leo Wadada Smith). Also in 2024 the private digital-only archival quintet recording Unfiltered from 2019 surfaced. October closed the year with The Susceptible Now on Pi Recordings, a trio album featuring pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Harish Raghavan.