For George Lewis / Autoschediasms

As "arresting a figure in contemporary classical and experimental new music as he is in jazz (New York Times)," and a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2017, Tyshawn Sorey has carved out his own territory as a musician and composer whose range of vision, emotion and visceral power is a driving and defining force behind a young Black vanguard in new music. This pristinely recorded double-album collaboration with the vaunted chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound documents two unique works - the stately, still For George Lewis (dedicated to the legendary avant garde trombonist and composer) and the cinematic, sweeping Autoschediasms (inspired by the real-time improvisational "conductions" of Butch Morris, with a special nod to Anthony Braxton's "language music" system). Taken together, these performances - part of which were recorded in a video chat during the pandemic - find the composer testing the limits of the ensemble's imagination and concentration, and paint a wide-angle sonic canvas that is by turns taut, trenchant, and profoundly moving.