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The 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Music

Finalist: Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), by Tyshawn Sorey

First premiered on February 19, 2022 at the Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas, an exquisitely crafted composition that balances density with fragile detail using chords and singing, particularly a strong bass voice, a masterful blend of sound and contemplative silence.

Nominated Work

Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)

By

Tyshawn Sorey

Overview of the Park Avenue Armory iteration of the work. (Park Avenue Armory)

Tyshawn Sorey: Rothko Chapel 50th Anniversary Commission Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) | Songs for Justice Series
Tyshawn Sorey, composer, conductor
Houston Chamber Choir
Davóne Tines, bass-baritone
Kim Kashkashian, viola
Steven Schick, percussion
Sarah Rothenberg, piano/celesta

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of Rothko Chapel, DACAMERA and Rothko Chapel commissioned boundary-breaking composer Tyshawn Sorey to create a new work inspired by the Chapel and by Morton Feldman’s 20th-century masterpiece, Rothko Chapel, composed for the opening celebration. Tyshawn Sorey epitomizes DACAMERA’s commitment to work that explodes traditional distinctions between genres. Using the same instrumentation as Feldman with the addition of piano, Tyshawn Sorey brings to this new work his impressive background in jazz and creative music. Sorey’s new work premieres during the 50th anniversary year of the first performance of the Feldman work at the dedication of the Chapel in 1972.

“My music is synonymous with meditation in that it is intended to expand one’s consciousness and fulfillment THROUGH the act of listening as well as giving the experiencer the opportunity to heighten their sense of awareness…my music perfectly aligns with the intention of the Chapel, which has always served as a place for meditation.” – Tyshawn Sorey

-- from the Rothko Chapel's production page

Fifty years ago, composer Morton Feldman wrote music to commemorate the opening of the Rothko Chapel in Houston. A half-century later, composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist and MacArthur “Genius” Tyshawn Sorey has created a new piece, commissioned by the Armory, as a tribute to both the deeply contemplative space and the work by this composer that has influenced his creative output. The resulting score provides the listener with the feeling of being enveloped in sound in much the same way that Mark Rothko’s paintings give in that space, revealing ever changing shades of color and texture.

Visionary director Peter Sellars returns to the Armory following his unforgettable stagings of St. Matthew Passion (2014) and FLEXN (co-created with Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray in 2015, 2017) to ritualize this deeply moving work. Within the confines of a ceremonial chamber, audiences are immersed in Sorey’s composition, works by celebrated visual artist Julie Mehretu, and choreography by flex pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray to gain new perspectives on time, space, and movement. And while profoundly personal, this spiritual happening also serves as an invocation of the collective memory and ancestral trauma of our time and the distant but resonant past.

A Park Avenue Armory Commission
The musical composition Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) was originally co-commissioned by Park Avenue Armory, DaCamera, and Rothko Chapel in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Rothko Chapel.

Composer, Conductor, Tyshawn Sorey
Director, Peter Sellars
Visual Artist, Julie Mehretu
Choreographer, Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray
Lighting Design, James F. Ingalls
Sound Design, Marc Urselli
Viola, Kim Kashkashian
Piano/Celesta, Sarah Rothenberg
Percussion, Steven Schick
Soloist, Davóne Tines
Choir, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street

-- from the Park Avenue Armory's production page

Biography

Tyshawn Sorey’s (he/him/his) wide ranging work has spanned a multitude of musical and performance mediums, while at the same time defying distinctions between musical genres, composition, and improvisation. An active composer, drum set player, percussionist, trombonist, pianist, conductor, educator, and ensemble leader, Sorey has released fifteen recordings that feature his work as a composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist and conceptualist.

Sorey is a creative artist whose work is impossible to categorize. He has maintained a lifelong interest in establishing an alternative musical model that celebrates genre mobility as an artistic ideal and a compositional attitude, both within and outside of the improvisation-composition continuum. Sorey’s written and spontaneously composed works can range from lyrical, expressive content to slowly unfolding, barely inaudible sonorities and gestures. Moreover, his music can also contain raucous, maximalist structures that are influenced by noise, death metal, and fast-paced improvisations. Finally, his music also largely deals heavily in multiple streams of Black American music – including Spirituals, improvisation and groove-oriented vernacular musics – as well as West African, Afro-Cuban, and Asian folkloric, ritual, and ceremonial traditional musics and practices.

Tyshawn Sorey 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 cites Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Anthony Braxton among his principal teachers.

Sorey’s many collaborations include recordings, premieres, and performances with past and present seminal figures in contemporary music, including Braxton, Lewis, Vijay Iyer, John Zorn, Olga Neuwirth, Roscoe Mitchell, Julia Bullock, Butch Morris, Stephen Gosling, Jen Shyu, Jason Moran, Nicole Mitchell, Peter Evans, Steve Lehman, Marilyn Crispell, Fay Victor, Val-Inc, Klangforum Wien, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, the Lucerne Festival Players, Muhal Richard Abrams, Myra Melford, Matana Roberts, HPrizm of Antipop Consortium, Joe Morris, and Claire Chase, among many others. He has composed numerous works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble, PRISM Quartet, JACK Quartet, TAK Ensemble, the McGill-McHale Trio, Johnny Gandelsman, bass-baritone Davone Tines, Seth Parker Woods, Jennifer Koh, Awadagin Pratt, The Crossing, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, countertenor John Holiday, Alarm Will Sound, Matthew Haimovitz, the Louisville Orchestra, and tenor Lawrence Brownlee among many other performers and ensembles. His music has been performed in notable venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Village Vanguard, the Ojai Music Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Kimmel Center, Lincoln Center, and the Park Avenue Armory. He is currently Composer-in-Residence at Opera Philadelphia.

Sorey was named a 2018 United States Artists Fellow and a 2017 MacArthur Fellow. Among other honors he has received include the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Foundation award, a residency as "artist etoile" for the 2022 Lucerne Summer Festival, two grants from the Shifting Foundation, a Robert Rauschenberg artists residency, a performance residency at The Kitchen, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Impact Award.

Winners

Prize Winner in Music in 2023:

Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels

Premiered on May 27, 2022 at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., an innovative and compelling opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries, a musical work that respectfully represents African as well as African American traditions, expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage. Music

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Music in 2023:

Jerrilynn Patton

Recording by Third Coast Percussion released on May 13, 2022 by Cedille Records, an artful work that uses technology to create a musical language of shifting textures, driving grooves and floating melodies that morph over seven movements, generating connectivity as well as difference.

The Jury

John V. Brown, Jr.(Chair)

Vice Provost for the Arts and Professor of the Practice of Music, Duke University

Raven Chacon*

Composer, Red Hook, N.Y.

Du Yun*

Composer, New York, N.Y.

Arturo O’Farrill

Founder/Artistic Director, Afro Latin Jazz Alliance; Professor, Global Jazz Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

Carol J. Oja

William Powell Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University

Winners in Music

2022

Raven Chacon

Premiered on November 21, 2021 in Milwaukee, Wis., a mesmerizing, original work for organ and ensemble that evokes the weight of history in a church setting, a concentrated and powerful musical expression with a haunting visceral impact.
2021

Tania León

Premiered at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City on February 13, 2020, a musical journey full of surprise, with powerful brass and rhythmic motifs that incorporate Black music traditions from the US and the Caribbean into a Western orchestral fabric.
2020

Anthony Davis

Premiered on June 15, 2019 at the Long Beach Opera, a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful. Libretto by Richard Wesley.
2019

Ellen Reid

A bold new operatic work that uses sophisticated vocal writing and striking instrumental timbres to confront difficult subject matter: the effects of sexual and emotional abuse. Libretto by Roxie Perkins. Prism was commissioned and produced by Beth Morrison Projects in association with Trinity Wall Street, presented in a rolling world premiere with LA Opera and the PROTOTYPE Festival.
See All Music

2023 Prize Winners

Commentary

Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham

For measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion, told through tours of its first capital, its mansions and monuments–and through the history that has been omitted.
Investigative Reporting

Staff of The Wall Street Journal

For sharp accountability reporting on financial conflicts of interest among officials at 50 federal agencies, revealing those who bought and sold stocks they regulated and other ethical violations by individuals charged with safeguarding the public’s interest.
See All 2023 Winners