Tyshawn Sorey Trio // NDR Bigband

Tyshawn Sorey, whose playing with Myra Melford’s sextet was one of the highlights of last year’s festival, is the artist in residence of the Jazzfest Berlin 2017. He returns in several different guises: first with his own trio, whose albums, “Alloy” (2014) and “Verisimilitude” (2017), have been received with great enthusiasm. Sorey received his doctorate in composition from Columbia University earlier this year and recently took up a professorship at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, in succession to Anthony Braxton, another original thinker about the relationship between composition and improvisation. Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1980, Sorey has been described by the “Wall Street Journal” as “a composer of radical and seemingly limitless ideas.” Tonight’s concert offers a progress report on a group of musicians intent on bringing the influence of contemporary classical composers such as Xenakis and Feldman to bear as they excavate new possibilities from beneath the surface of the familiar piano-trio format.
www.facebook.com/tyshawn.sorey/
www.corysmythe.com

Geir Lysne, the Norwegian saxophonist, composer, arranger and conductor, was appointed to the post of director of the NDR Bigband last year. His work with the Hamburg-based ensemble is already well known: in 2013 their joint project with the Italian pianist Stefano Bollani, released by Verve/Universal, received the ECHO Jazz prize for the big-band album of the year. Born in Trondheim in 1965, Geir Lysne studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music before working with many different ensembles, including the Aarhus Jazz Orchestra, the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, the hr-Bigband in Frankfurt and the UMO Jazz Orchestra in Helsinki. His recorded work includes several albums with his own Listening Ensemble: “Aurora Borealis” (2002), “Korall” (2003) and “Boahjenásti – The North Star” (2006). His new work, which receives its premiere tonight, is a meditation on Norway’s rich contribution to the world of jazz in recent years, a gift out of all proportion to the country’s modest size.
www.geirlysne.com
www.ndr.de/orchester_chor/bigband