Tyshawn Sorey
Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith) for alto saxophone and orchestra (2022) (available C.F. Peters)
WINNER, 2024 PULITZER PRIZE IN MUSIC
Newark-born multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. The Wall Street Journal notes Sorey is, “a composer of radical and seemingly boundless ideas.” The New Yorker recently noted that he is “among the most formidable denizens of the in-between zone…An extraordinary talent who can see across the entire musical landscape.” Sorey has received support from The Jerome Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, Van Lier Fellowship, and was named a 2017 MacArthur fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. He received a B.Music in Jazz Studies and Performance from William Paterson University, an M.A. in Music Composition from Wesleyan University, and a D.M.A. in Music Composition from Columbia University. He is currently Presidential Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.
Booking Information
- Martha Woods
- President
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Jonathan Wentworth Associates Ltd.
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6118 40th AvenueHyattsville, Maryland 20782-3012
- Martha@Jwentworth.com
Video Highlights
Interviews & Features
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“Tyshawn Sorey’s “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)” (Atlanta Symphony Orchestra) – U.S. premiere”
New Music USA, March 2023 -
“Amplifying Voices: Tyshawn Sorey”
New Music USA, September 2022 -
“Tyshawn Sorey Plays It His Way”
Downbeat Magazine, September 2023 -
“Jazz drummer and composer brings alternative concerto to ASO”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2023 -
“Philadelphia’s Tyshawn Sorey wins Pulitzer Prize in Music”
Peter Dobrin - The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2024 -
“Live Recording of World Premiere with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra”
Tyshawn Sorey Soundcloud, August 2022
The Critics Speak
“REVIEW: Stephen Mulligan returns to the ASO for a saxophone-driven program”
“The evening’s linchpin was its second piece, “Adagio (For Wanda Lee Smith)”…Timothy McAllister was comfortable standing with one foot in each of the normally disparate worlds of classical refinement and hard bop intimacy. “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)” flat out works thanks to a consistently...
“REVIEW: Gorgeous Tyshawn Sorey and Thomas Adès concerto double-bill at Lucerne Festival”
“…Sorey’s writing for the solo sax establishes whole another brand of virtuosity, one wrought of long lines, where each note is given its singular identity; a procedure akin to the playing of the concerto’s dedicatee as well as the tintinnabulations of...
“The world premiere ‘Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)’ by the artiste etoile Tyshawn Sorey brings a meditative contrast. Together with the saxophonist Timothy McAllister, the musicians paint broad lines, delving into the mysteries of sound. The plucking strings are falling drops of water that always sound different. The mixture of bass clarinet, trombones, and string basses - a hum that resonates inside us.”