Tyshawn Sorey Trio with Aaron Diehl and Harish Raghavan + Sandbox Percussion

Tyshawn Sorey is a 2024 Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and multi-instrumentalist celebrated for his extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work, while also offering incomparable virtuosity and effortless mastery of highly complex scores. He has performed globally with his own ensembles, as well as alongside industry titans including John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, King Britt, Claire Chase, Roscoe Mitchell, and Steve Lehman, among many others. As a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 USA Fellow, the bar is set high for Sorey’s continued evolution and success. His composition Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) was honored as a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in music, and he won in 2024 for Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith). Downbeat Magazinerecognized Sorey in its 2023 Critics Poll Award as a Rising Star Producer. Sorey joined the composition faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 2020. He was selected as a Peabody Institute Musician-in-Residence at Johns Hopkins University for fall 2023 and has taught and lectured on composition and improvisation at an impressive assortment of institutions. In the future, Sorey plans to continue pushing boundaries, extending cultural norms, and reformulating public perceptions of modern Black/Afrodiasporic creative practice through the breadth and depth of his works. Sorey preformed at the Wexner Center in 2015 with the Steve Lehman Octet.

Described as “exhilarating” (New York Times) and “utterly mesmerizing” (Guardian), GRAMMY®-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion is dedicated to artistry in contemporary chamber music. The ensemble was brought together in 2011 by a love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together; today, Sandbox Percussion captivates worldwide audiences with visually and aurally stunning performances. Sandbox Percussion’s 2021 album Seven Pillars was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition. In 2023 Sandbox Percussion released their fourth album, Wilderness, featuring the piece of the same name by experimental composer Jerome Begin. Besides maintaining an international performance schedule, Sandbox Percussion holds the position of ensemble-in-residence and percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and The New School’s College of Performing Arts in New York. In 2016, Sandbox Percussion founded the Sandbox Percussion Seminar, introducing percussion students to the leading percussion chamber music of the day.