92NY to Present Max Roach At 100: Tyshawn Sorey Trio & Sandbox Percussion

The 92nd Street Y, New York will present Pulitzer Prize winner, composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey and his trio - pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Harish Raghavan - and the GRAMMY-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion will celebrate the extraordinary legacy of legendary drummer, composer and activist Max Roach on his centenary. The concert is in person and streaming on Friday, February 21 at 7:30 pm and available online for 72 hours following the performance. 

Roach, a pioneer of bebop and the founder of modern jazz, played with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and other jazz icons. He had a deep connection to 92NY, curating a concert series in the 1990s and performing with artists including Lester Bowie, Julius Hemphill, Christian McBride, Tito Puente and others.

Sorey shares a profound affinity with Roach - as a jazz drummer, curator, composer, arranger, and an endlessly inventive artist. Long a champion of Roach's music, the Tyshawn Sorey Trio opens the program with tunes by Roach or associated with him. Sandbox Percussion, a leading performer of percussion and contemporary chamber music, follows with a Roach-inspired set. Tyshawn's trio and Sandbox Percussion then join together for their first time on the 92NY stage with the New York premiere of Cogitations, a new work by Sorey inspired by Roach to close out a concert from two of the most forward-looking ensembles in music.

"The work that I have done for the entirety of my career exhibits Max Roach's influence-both directly and indirectly. This has been made clear too many times to count," comments Sorey. "Cogitations is a work that champions Roach's revolutionary history as one of, if not the, first noted drummer-composer in sophisticated Afrodiasporic music-making whose body of work extends far beyond compositions written solely for the drum set and employs a wide range of instrumentations. This music features a percussion quartet along with my piano trio and primarily draws inspiration from the M'Boom percussion ensemble and from spontaneous compositions/interpretations of compositions written for and by all of its original members."

Program to include:

• Julius Eastman, Joy Boy (arr. Sandbox Percussion)

• George Lewis, Le témoignage des lumières

• Omar Clay & Warren Smith, Morning/Midday (arr. Sandbox Percussion after M'Boom)

• Tyshawn Sorey, Cogitations (92NY co-commission; NY premiere)