Tyshawn Sorey, a Presidential Assistant Professor of Music in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, has won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Sorey received the Prize for his musical composition “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith).”
The Pulitzer Prize in music recognizes a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.
“Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)” had its U.S. premiere on March 16, 2023, at Atlanta Symphony Hall and was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In the Pulitzer Prize announcement, the work was described as “an introspective saxophone concerto with a wide range of textures presented in a slow tempo, a beautiful homage that’s quietly intense, treasuring intimacy rather than spectacle.”
The soloist for both the U.S. premiere and the world premiere in Lucerne on Aug. 20, 2022, was Timothy McAllister. The U.S. premiere was part of New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program.
A renowned multi-instrumentalist and composer, Sorey came to Penn in 2020. He has performed around the world with his own ensembles and has released 13 critically acclaimed recordings as a composer, drummer, and bandleader. Sorey was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017. In 2020, he and Brooke O’Harra, a senior lecturer in creative writing, received a grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage for “Be Holding,” part of a project by Girard College. In 2023, his composition “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)” was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Sorey is described as “a creative artist whose work is impossible to categorize.” In an interview with The Penn Gazette in August 2023, Sorey spoke about his desire to escape having his music be defined by musical genres. He said, “For me, I’m a listener who’s curious not only about the music that I’m playing but all music in general. So, terms like ‘jazz’—or even terms like ‘improvisation’—carry so much historical baggage and negative connotations that I feel shouldn’t align with what I’m doing.”
Sorey’s Pultizer Prize-winning piece is dedicated to the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, with whom he has performed and recorded.
