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CELEBRATED COMPOSER TYSHAWN SOREY ADDS A 2024 PULITZER PRIZE

TO HIS LIST OF PROFESSIONAL ACCOLADES

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey can now add Pulitzer Prize in Music winner to his impressive list of professional accomplishments, as announced this week by Columbia University on behalf of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Sorey celebrates his 2024 victory for “Adagio (for Wadada Leo Smith),” which premiered in March 2023 at Atlanta Symphony Hall, just one year after being named a Pulitzer finalist for his acclaimed composition “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife).” ML(A) has been recorded with the Houston Chamber Choir and DaCamera, and is scheduled for commercial release later this year. Smith, Sorey’s mentor and friend to whom the piece was dedicated, was himself a Pulitzer finalist in 2013 for his work “Ten Freedom Summers.”

“It is absolutely an honor and a privilege to have been selected for this Prize. So many incredible composers and performers whose work I’ve long admired have been finalists and winners of the Pulitzer. I hope that my work inspires others in the profound manner in which I was inspired by many of the composers and performers on this list. It is my duty to continue doing my best in striving to uphold and extend the legacies and aesthetics surrounding both formal and spontaneous composition, and being the recipient of the Pulitzer is an encouraging reminder that I am indeed on the path I’m supposed to be on.” 

Sorey currently serves as the Presidential Assistant Professor in the Departments of Music and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, after joining their faculty in Fall 2020. In addition to being a 2023 Pulitzer finalist, Sorey was named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow, and served as Peabody Resident at Johns Hopkins University in Fall 2023. He maintains a vigorous performance schedule as a solo artist, with his own trio, and as a collaborator with Grammy-nominated pianist Vijay Iyer. Upcoming projects include a solo show as part of the Venice Biennale in September, ongoing performances with his trio, and a tour with Sandbox Percussion celebrating the Max Roach Centennial including another new piece written by Sorey.