Review: TYSHAWN SOREY – ALONE at Her Majesty’s Theatre

Review by Lisa Lanzi

For one night only, Tyshawn Sorey performed an hour-long piano solo.  This artist is a titan of a musician, educator, and composer as well as an imposing physical presence on stage, almost dwarfing Her Majesty’s treasured Yamaha C7 grand.  

The multi-instrumentalist is in town as composer of, and musician within, the ensemble for another work: Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine; so, it makes perfect sense to have Sorey also grace us with this impeccable solo gig.  The piano was centre stage and lidless to expose the soundboard and strings facilitating a more open, balanced, omnidirectional sound.  Lighting was subdued in blue tones with a gobo effect patterning the stage floor and subtle, warmer light on Sorey.

Currently serving as Presidential Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, Sorey was one of twenty-four 2017 MacArthur Fellows receiving the prestigious $625,000 "genius" grant for his boundary-defying work as a composer, percussionist, trombonist, drummer, and pianist.  He is recognized for his work in genre-bending composition and improvisation, combining Black American music with classical and experimental forms.  Sorey also won the 2024 Pulitizer Prize in Music for Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith).  The saxophone concerto was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with its world premiere in Lucerne, August 2022, and a US premiere in Atlanta in 2023.

This performance, titled Alone, gave us the experience of an artist who is intimately and thoroughly familiar with their instrument.  The kind of artist who is doing exactly what they were born to do.  Sorey made sounds on the piano that seemed to defy physiology, chords stretching and blending over an octave with the left hand while the right hand delicately repeated notes in the higher register, like an insect flitting from flower to flower.  In fact, the sound ‘pictures’ and ‘conversations’ that ensued gave listeners an opportunity to freely wander in thought as melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and dissonances streamed forth.  I venture to suggest that Sorey was fully immersed in the ‘flow state’ during this improvisational performance, allowing his instincts full reign with the utter confidence of a master technician alongside the inherent artistry he displays.

Dynamic range was important and varied throughout, just as any good conversation can ebb and flow.  Use of the sustain pedal was quite a feature as Sorey at one stage released a wall of sound in the lower range that could have been thunder, or even the thunderous vibration caused by herds of animals in flight – the technical prowess was astounding, and impossible for me to analyse.  In addition to a full exploration of the keyboard, Sorey used the open piano to pluck and strum the wires to add further variation during his inventions.

The atmosphere was reverent, and I expect that many in the audience were students and lecturers of music, as well as the general learned and appreciative public.  The applause said it all, and it was difficult to believe that an hour had passed.  Such was the genius and the mastery.  It was a pleasure to be swept along in this adventure.

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