>> David Plylar: Thanks everybody for being here. My name is David Plylar. I'm with the Concert Office of the Music Division at the Library of Congress, and we have a really exciting project that we've been really waiting for for a long time. Celebrating the centenary of Max Roach with Tyshawn Sorey and the Tyshawn Sorey Trio, and also Sandbox Percussion and a new work by Tyshawn that we'll be hearing tonight that's just premiered last week. And this will be, you know, maybe the third or fourth. Third performance. And we thought we'd just start before we kind of dig in just to have a conversation about the concert tonight. We thought we'd start with just saying a little bit about Max Roach at the Library of Congress. And so I'm here with my colleague Mike Turpin, who is our senior sound engineer, who's been here recording concerts for-- >> Mike Turpin: Too many years. [Laughter] We won't say. >> David Plylar: But I'll turn it over to him just to kind of give us an introductory. >> Mike Turpin: Well, thank you, David. And I guess some of you are puzzled by why I'm here. Usually you see me back there with Jay, but I am on the panel because I had the privilege of having Max Roach as a college professor. Max was on the faculty of UMass, University of Massachusetts from the early 70s into the 90s, and I was a student there in 1975. When I got to campus, I heard that he was on the faculty. So the first thing I did was find the music department, find his office, knock on his door, and he was there and I signed up for his history of jazz class. I was not a music major, but I took probably every music course you could take short of that. So, we stayed in touch. And in 1995, this clip I'm going to play shows Max, when he was here, he did a lecture and he came back in '99 and did a concert. So I'm going to play this little clip. It's a cute story about Max subbing for Duke Ellington's drummer. >> I just wanted you to hear a little story he told that night. So this is in the Mumford Room in 1995. Max Roach and clip number two. >> I met people. I worked with Duke Ellington when I was 17, and from that point on, I was just a lucky so-and-so, so to speak. Because when you're a kid and you work with the mighty ones like Duke and people like that, I had an opportunity. I was, even though I still didn't know what was going on and what I was doing in a way, I must have known something, though. But in any case, after that, I was just "A Star" 17 year old kid working the New York Paramount with great Duke Ellington's band because Sonny Greer had gotten sick, and it was during the war, and big Sidney Catlett and Kenny Clarke and all these folks were in the Army. So I had the gig because I could read music. And the funny story about that is that when I got called for that job, I was working in a place owned by Billie Holiday's brother in law, Clark Monroe. She was married to Jimmy Monroe at that time. I didn't know them then. Then this is all after the fact. Now I'm writing my autobiography. I'm singing. Oh, well. Yeah. Really? That these were important people. But when I got down to the New York Paramount and looked at that stage, which was down below the audience, and it rose up like this when the show started and looked around me on that, there was the Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and all these people, and here's the little boy up there with them. But when Mr. Ellington finally loaded up the bandstand and came on the stage and the bandstand rose up to the audience, the drummer was at the pinnacle. It was the top, you know. Duke had a way of designing even the bandstand. And so I was a kid, as I said earlier, who had a reputation, could read a show. You know, it was vaudeville in those days. And when I hit the bandstand and looked around at Mr. Greer's drum kit, he had timpani, vibraphones, bells, chimes. And Duke had wrote for everything, but not a sheet of music was in sight. I turned white. [Laughter] So when Mr. Ellington came to the stage, when he finally, after what he loads up on the stage down here and he came up and he looked up at this young guy on the stage. He summed it up just perfectly. He said, keep one eye on me and one eye on the act. He was the greatest conductor I've ever worked under. You know, I just made it through that. But then the reputation came out that there was a kid downtown who worked with Mr. Ellington, and from then on, I worked with the Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Roy Eldridge, Coleman. Just everybody. I had it made. So here I am. [Laughter] >> David Plylar: Thank you, Mike, for sharing that with us. And you might have recognized, Larry Applebaum was there speaking. He was a long time jazz curator at the Library of Congress. I thought maybe we could start just kind of talking about what the genesis of this project that you guys have been working on. >> Tyshawn Sorey: Well, first, I want to state for the record that he's still here. He's still here among us. And, part of the idea for this project is to explore an area of his music that, you know, I mean, listen, I mean, the thing is, is I think what happens mistakenly and often is that the general public just sees Max Roach as just this jazz drummer who has worked with, you know, many of the acolytes in the field and, you know, many of the incredible legends who we celebrate today. And to say that is fine, except I personally, as a Percussionist and as a drummer, as a composer, I find it a limiting thing to put on somebody like Max, because to me, I mean, he was more than just simply a jazz drummer who accompanied musicians. I mean, he was a complete, total artist who often thought about the larger picture no matter what musician he played with. And it didn't even have to be a jazz musician. I mean, it could be any kind of artist. He was always someone who thought well outside the box, no matter what the situation was. And so what I wanted to do is get to that aspect of his life, you know, and deal with this aspect of his music. And that he considered not only the drum set for the instrument, for what it is. And it's interesting that he brought up Sonny Greer in that interview that we heard, because Sonny, he was one of the first musicians to, like, have this world of Percussion around him in Duke Ellington's group. And when you think about Duke Ellington and you think about Sonny Greer, I mean, it's, you know, Sonny Greer, what he did was he provided a different kind of aesthetic to drum set playing. You know, it wasn't a simple thing about just simply accompanying, you know, Duke Ellington and, you know, and the soloists in his orchestra and that kind of thing. I mean, he would often, you know, for different kinds of things, explored different timbres, you know, within the drum set, you know, within the different things that he had, you know, he had, you know, a lot of other kinds of metals and timpani and all of this other stuff around him. And so he had this world of sound, you know, that he was able to explore. And Max, to me, was a musician who was very open to that and actually, you know, really took that in a further direction, you know, with the M'Boom ensemble, which he founded in 1970. And, to him, this was beyond, you know, just the simple fact of getting together numerous drummers, you know, he considered, you know, the drum set as only one element of the Percussion family. And so he wanted to have musicians to really explore the entire family of Percussion, where they would have these rehearsals every Saturday, every Saturday in Brooklyn, they would get together and they would, you know, rehearse and also sometimes come up with, you know, compositions, you know, right there on the spot. So not only do you have drummers who are exploring the entire Percussion family, but you also have drummers who, you know, who don't limit themselves to the idea of drummer or percussionist. They really thought of themselves as composers, and they dealt with the music with such an intent that, you know, you couldn't necessarily tell, you know, what parts of the music was composed and what was improvised. In fact, I don't even bother to try to measure those things out. And I don't think that's even really the point of why that music is so striking in the way that it is. So cogitations, which is a work that I developed with my trio. Working in tandem with Sandbox Percussion is very much like that. And it very much explores the possibilities within both of our formats, you know, within my trio, which we normally, you know, perform a lot of different compositions, sometimes original works, but oftentimes, standard song forms. And we do it in a way that, you know, is, I guess one might say, is unique in a sense, where we twist these song forms and do different things with them that, you know, we're thinking a little bit more in a compulsory fashion rather than just simply improvising over the same form. And with Sandbox, exploring the timbres, that can very much work in tandem with what we do, um, as a trio and in, you know, having engaged in both of these worlds for a long time, you know, dealing with Percussion and dealing with new music, contemporary classical music and that kind of thing, as well as the performance of jazz and other forms of jazz and other kinds of spontaneous composition, things of that sort. Having engaged myself in these worlds for the last 25 years, I felt this could be as personal as I can make it. You know, in terms of what I wanted to do with both of these groups. And so with the spirit of Max Roach and M'Boom and his way of thinking about how that ensemble was formed and the way that the musicians were able to develop within that ensemble, and also what it stood for. I mean, we could talk all day about, you know, the different aspects of that group had drawn itself to me. But but I think suffice it to say that, um, this takes great inspiration from that area of Max's work. I mean, of course, you know, Max is a huge influence on me and is a great inspiration. But like as I said before, I think this is an area that I feel is underexplored, and I think that this is something that I want us to really think about when we experience this piece of music we're going to perform together tonight. >> David Plylar: Thank you. Mike. >> Mike Turpin: Can I ask you both how your first encounter, how did you discover Max Roach, his music and talk about his influence on your playing and compositions? Either one. >> Ian Rosenbaum: Sure. Yeah. Well, I'll just say something quickly. I mean, all four of us in the Sandbox have a drum set background. That that was our entry point to what we do today. And so Max Roach was quickly a part of what we were listening to and what we were learning from as drum set players and to Tyshawn's point, for many years, for decades of my life, I thought that's where it ended with Max Roach. And it wasn't until this project that Tyshawn and our friend Richard, uh, showed us in M'Boom and taught us that there was a Percussion ensemble in the 70s founded by this amazing drummer, Max Roach, that we didn't know about. Like, we knew about John Cage and Lou Harrison and Steve Reich and all these other people that we consider the fathers of the Percussion ensemble that we have today. But Max Roach was doing the exact same thing. And so this thing that we're developing in this, in this project is very new to, to me. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> David Plylar: Yeah. Well, thank you both for speaking about that. I'm wondering if you could just say a bit more just about, I mean, just with this crowd. How many of you have experienced listening to Percussion ensembles as, like a-- Okay. Well, hey. Well, this is the right crowd. That's great. You know, I guess, I got to hear a little bits of the piece when you were rehearsing earlier, and there's an element that sounds to me like there's this sort of really big instrument in the way that the different parts are kind of interacting, and I'm wondering if that's if that's how you're thinking about it, or if in terms of the way that these kind of really interesting sounds are, you know, melding with each other and just what sorts of what's the interactions sort of feel like as you're working through these pieces? >> Tyshawn Sorey: Well, I wanted to get away from first the idea that this would be a piano trio versus Percussion ensemble type of situation where, you know, you would have a thing where the piano trio does its own thing, and then the Percussion ensemble does its own thing within the same piece or something like that. Like, I didn't want to create a work like that, like I wanted to create a structure where everyone in the group, you know, is responsible for the type of interaction that's going on. And we have very, very specific parameters and very different things that each of us within this larger ensemble, or as opposed to, do, you know, in the process of realizing this piece, you know, and so that's the first thing. The second part of it, the second piece of the puzzle is that, you know, this interpretation of the piece is only for this audience who has attended tonight's concert. In other words, every version of the piece that we do is very different. And it's always going to be a fresh interpretation every time. And there may be sometimes additions to whatever has happened from the previous performance, or there may be a certain omission that might happen in the course of rehearsal or something like that, like the structure is malleable in that way. Um, so looking at the Percussion ensemble and our trio as this mega instrument, you know, where all of the members are responsible for the results of the interpretive nature of the piece. You know, I think, all of that speaks to the very same concept that what that Max was looking for with in M'Boom. You know, where they discovered all of these different parameters together, you know, within, you know, idiomatic so-called jazz context, but also outside of that, you know, more explorative things that they were doing as an ensemble. So, you know, it's, uh, it runs the gamut, you know, so to speak. And, there's a lot that's always going on during the piece. And we explore different sound worlds as the piece goes. And, it's a very wild ride, I can tell you that, because it's, sometimes even during the course of a live performance, this hasn't happened yet. But in the course of a live performance, something might change even then, you know, which very much speaks to the way that I like to design, you know, a work like this where, you know, composition and improvisation or so-called improvisation, I prefer to say spontaneous composition just because improvisation, it just makes it sound like too much like we don't know what we're doing which in fact-- [Laughter] In fact, you know, something about, you know, sparing the semantic argument, I think, we're really, you know, blurring these, this dichotomy of, you know, how much of this is composed or how much of this is written and this kind of thing. I don't think, like, as I said before, I don't think that should matter. And I think that upon listening, really listen to the sound itself, you know, the sound of the ensemble and the different kinds of exchanges that are going on within the group. And, you know, feel free to isolate them at any time. You know, you may hear things where the entire group is playing together, but then one side of the group might be interacting in one way, and then another side of the group might be interacting in another way. You know, you can feel free to separate these different things as one pleases. So there's a lot of places you can go with that. But I think in general, I mean, to answer your question, that's more or less how this is designed. >> David Plylar: Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm really excited to hear it. And I'm also excited to hear the kind of surrounding context, because we get to hear the trio alone and then also the Percussion ensemble playing some pieces that are inspired by the Roach Percussion ensemble type of. So maybe, maybe you can speak a bit more about what those, those particular aspects of those separate sections. And I should mention that the concert is actually not going to have an intermission. And so it will be in three parts where the trio plays first and then the Percussion ensemble and then the commission the at the end of the concert. >> Tyshawn Sorey: Well, speaking on the trio side of things, we will perform three compositions. And two of them are penned by Mr. Roach himself. The first composition we will begin with is titled Sunday afternoon And that's from the recording It's Time. Okay. So that's going to be the first piece we're going to play. And then the second piece we're going to play is by a much lesser known composer and performer, but somebody who I think is equally as important as Max in his contribution to the music, Hassan ibn Ali. And we're going to perform a composition of his from an album that Max recorded with him in the mid 1960s, titled Almost Like Me. So we're going to perform that piece, and after that we're going to perform the title track from the album, It's Time, and we're going to, you know, close our set with that. And then Sandbox is going to follow with their pieces, which Ian's going to talk about. >> Ian Rosenbaum: Yeah. So for our set, we looked at composers either who were contemporaries of Max Roach or who were working in a similar but unique way, or also other people, another generation of composers that we think were inspired by Max Roach in the same way that we are. So we're going to play a piece by Julius Eastman, which shares a lot of the ethos of how this music is put together in that the score for this piece is kind of like a lead sheet. It has a very specific harmonic structure, melodic structure, but the timbres that you use, other than a few descriptive words like he says, "Play like a ticker tape machine" at the top of the score. So he gives you some descriptions, but other than that, he really leaves it up to you to figure out how to make that music happen. A piece by Julius Eastman. Then we're going to go right into a piece by George Lewis, who is a titan of contemporary music today. We have never worked with him. So this was a very exciting thing for us to discover this piece, it's pretty new. It was written just a few years ago, and I think had only been performed maybe by one ensemble before we picked it up. George Lewis also is a former teacher and mentor of Tyshawn, and so that connection just felt too good to us to pass by. And then finally, at the end, we're going to actually play one of the M'Boom pieces that we've been talking about. Thanks to the Library of Congress, we were able to get all these incredible scores of these pieces. And we spent a long time listening to this music and studying the scores, and we picked one that we really liked. This piece called Morning Midday. But like the Julius Eastman, the score, even though it's beautiful, is very spare. And so we listen to this recording and looked at the score and we could see that music was present in the recording, but they did so many beautiful things with it. And so we were like, okay, we could transcribe exactly what they did or we could do our thing with it. And so we spent a little while taking that lead sheet. And I mean, we didn't get jazz degrees. That's not our thing. But we love this music. And we spent a while together trying to compose out a version of this piece. That's the last thing we're going to play. And then about halfway through, the trio is going to join us. And it's it's my favorite part of the program when they start playing the Max Roach piece with us. >> Mike Turpin: Is this your first time playing together? >> Ian Rosenbaum: Yeah. The seven of us. Absolutely. So Tyshawn and I met. It's been a little while now. Like almost a decade ago, we played this one concert that I will never forget. It was an amazing, amazing concert. Um, but since then, Tyshawn wrote another piece for Sandbox, a piece for Percussion quartet and piano that we played a couple of times. But when this idea came up, I think we all thought it was the perfect pairing. >> Tyshawn Sorey: Yeah, it definitely made sense. And, you know, also just wanted to say too, that, you know, the beautiful thing about this program and what you guys have done, you know, with morning midday and, you know, and the Eastman piece in particular, in terms of the scores, that really sort of speaks to what Max's legacy is all about, is really dealing with this binary of composer and performer. Right? And sort of challenging that, you know, and really, you know, putting the onus, not the onus, but I should say, the performer, you know, is as much an integral part of the interpretation of the piece as the score is, you know, and the score, the score, you know, is translatable by the performer, and the performer is free to, you know, translate that form or translate the score, you know, in the, you know, in the most exact way possible. That's what we're used to, you know, as classical musicians and people who deal with contemporary classical literature. You know, you have a sheet music in front of you, and you have to play every single thing that's on the page. You have to translate it and do it like that. Whereas, you know, with Warren Smith, Omar Clay, Max Roach, and all of the, Joe Chambers, I mean, all of the incredible composers in M'Boom who are also performers, even though they would have scores sometimes, you know, Max had one rule when it came to his performances, no music on the stage. [Laughter] So all of the musicians, they had to memorize a lot of that stuff, you know, that they were performing. I mean, you can't go up there with a bunch of sheet music on stage. And I think, you know, that's another element. That's another part of, you know, what speaks to that legacy of the erasure of that binary, you know, where, you know, the composer and the performer are two mutually exclusive entities with the interpretation of a given work. And Max's music was not about that. You know, it was really about unifying these two practices, you know, in one. And, that's the great thing about what you guys have done, you know, with both the Eastman and, Morning Midday was you can see that logic, you know, present, you know, through all of these interpretations. So I just want to thank you personally for, you know, you all for having done that. You know, I didn't really get a chance to speak on that, you know, in front of people. But I think this is something that's also important to note here. >> Ian Rosenbaum: Thank you. I mean, this project has been-- We've learned so much through this process that Tyshawn is talking about. It's really opened our eyes to another way of, of performing, because we spend most of our time looking at pieces of paper with millions of dots on them and doing our best to execute those instructions. And this is a completely different way of thinking that I think is going to influence how we play those pieces as well. >> David Plylar: Do you anticipate doing more of this type of exploration in the future? >> Ian Rosenbaum: Absolutely. With respect to the M'Boom pieces. Like, I hope that this is not the end. It's certainly not the end of this program, but I hope it's not the end of our exploration of that repertoire because again, I didn't know about it. The Percussion world doesn't know about it. And so I think we want to make sure that people do. >> David Plylar: Well, we don't want to keep you too long before you have to get back to getting ready just for the concert, but wondering if you could just say a few things about what's kind of, what's next for you, what's coming up, other pieces you're working on or other performances that you're excited about or anything you'd like to share? >> Tyshawn Sorey: I'll let you start. >> Ian Rosenbaum: Okay. Yeah, sure. Well, we've had a little bit of a crazy fall. We got involved with an area of performing that we had never been involved with before this past summer. We were part of the film score for the DreamWorks movie that's out right now, The Wild Robot. We were connected through a mutual friend, and that movie is about a robot, of course. And the composer had this idea for this weird junk Percussion sound to kind of follow the character around for the whole story. And so he somehow found us and we had this amazing experience, actually very in line with what we're talking about, showing him all of our instruments. We brought like everything in our studio, a huge truck of instruments, this recording studio, and discovering what sounds we could make with someone who had never used those instruments before. So that was a really fun thing. And then our next concert, coming up in a few weeks, is the world premiere of a big new piece by a composer named Michael Torke, a wonderful composer who wrote a piece for us called Bloom. It's about an hour long. That's our latest album that we released a few months ago. We did the album, which is one thing. We have not yet played the piece live, so we've been working like crazy to learn how to play the piece live, and we're going to do that in a couple of weeks. >> Tyshawn Sorey: Yeah. Speaking of new albums, our trio just came out with a new recording called The Susceptible Now which is currently available on my website and on my Bandcamp page and a number of other platforms you can get it. So that just came out just beginning of this month, I believe. No. Or last month, I would say. Um, so that's been out now. In addition to that, there is a brass quintet that will be performed by the American Brass Quintet. Next April, I believe. But I'm finishing that up currently. There's also a new piece. Incidentally, we're talking about Julius Eastman. Um, this is the composition that I dedicate to Julius Eastman that will be performed by Sarah Rothenberg, the great pianist at the Menil Collection, at the Frick Museum in New York City and also at the Los Angeles Monday new music series. So it'll be done there as well. Also, our trio will be performing in support of our new CD in February. We have a European tour scheduled in February. That's going to happen. And, yeah, but my desk is very full of different things that I'm going to be working on over the next couple of years. Oh, also, I wanted to mention too, another project that I've had the fortune to be asked to contribute music for and, that is great hip hop artist, poet, freestyler, vocalist Akua Naru. We're doing a composition or I guess I'm setting the music and we're both setting the music to a book written by the scholar Tricia Rose called Longing to Tell. So we're in the middle of getting that piece finished. And that will premiere in Hamburg, Germany this coming August, after I've completed my time teaching at the Institute of New Music in Darmstadt. Um, so that'll be during my summer. So my summer looks very busy, but there's a lot going on that I'm very excited about and wanted to share that. And, you know, and if you all would visit my website or you all check out, you know, things that are going on you'll find all of that information there. >> David Plylar: Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. Check out these websites. And, Mike, is there anything else that you wanted to ask? I'm just, I guess-- >> Mike Turpin: No, I'm looking forward to the concert and just, you guys sounded great in rehearsal, and, you know, just enjoy. >> Tyshawn Sorey: We're excited, and we hope that you'll join us in this journey. And we look forward to taking you there with us. And as I always say, we'll see you on the other side. [Laughter] Thank you. >> Mike Turpin: Sounds good. [Applause] >> Ian Rosenbaum: Thank you.