Tyshawn Sorey/Aaron Diehl/Matt Brewer ^

Artists

Drums Tyshawn Sorey Piano Aaron Diehl

Bass Matt Brewer

COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON CISTERN YARD

June 4, 9:00pm

1 hour, 15 minutes Performed without an intermission

Sponsored by Wells Fargo

Made possible in part by the Oliver S. and Jennie R. Donaldson Charitable Foundation.

Programming at the College of Charleston Cistern Yard is kindly endowed by Carlos, Lisa, and Blake Evans.

Piano generously provided by Steinway & Sons.

This performance is made possible in part through funds from the Spoleto Festival USA Endowment, generously supported by BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.

The Festival’s Wells Fargo Jazz advisor and Wall Street Journal jazz critic Larry Blumenfeld speaks with Tyshawn Sorey at 5:00pm on Thursday, June 2, at Randolph Hall at the College of Charleston, 66 George St.

TYSHAWN SOREY (drums) is a Newark-born composer and multi-instrumentalist who occupies a unique space in and between spontaneous and formal composition. An artist whose work has proven impossible to categorize, he has maintained a lifelong interest in establishing an alternative musical model that celebrates genre mobility both as an artistic ideal and a compositional attitude. Sorey is currently Presidential Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania and composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia. He was also recently the Blodgett Artist in Residence at Harvard University. He was named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Among other awards and honors, he has received composition grants from the Shifting Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Van Lier Fellowship, and the Jerome Foundation, as well as the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Impact Award and a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

AARON DIEHL (piano) transforms the piano into an orchestral vessel in the spirit of beloved predecessors Ahmad Jamal, Erroll Garner, and Jelly Roll Morton. Following three critically-acclaimed leader albums on Mack Avenue Records—and appearances at historic venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Village Vanguard, and New York Philharmonic—the American Pianist Association’s 2011 Cole Porter fellow now focuses his attention on his forthcoming solo album and ongoing curation of Black American composers programming with emphasis on William Grant Still. A Juilliard graduate, Diehl has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Branford Marsalis, Philip Glass, and Grammy Award-winning artist Cécile McLorin Salvant. He recently appeared with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra as featured soloist.

MATT BREWER (bass) has developed and sustained a well-earned reputation as the first-call bassist, applying his resonant tone, uncanny time feel, and conceptual breadth on both upright and electric bass to touring and recording projects by an elite cohort of individualistic, game-changing artists such as Greg Osby, Ben Wendel, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Antonio Sanchez, David Binney, and Steve Lehman. Brewer also excels as a composer, as documented on four critically acclaimed Criss Cross albums. In 2001 he enrolled at The Juilliard School’s newly launched jazz school, where he studied with Rodney Whitaker and Ben Wolfe. He left Juilliard in 2004, after joining Greg Osby’s touring ensemble. He is also an esteemed jazz educator. He is currently Professor of Jazz Bass at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is an adjunct faculty member at The New School and has taught master classes across the globe.