Tyshawn Sorey and Do Yeon Kim | Improvisation: Duo

“This piece grabbed your attention right from the concert’s start. Do Yeon had this easy rapport and rapid-fire spontaneity with Tyshawn, which was really intriguing, surprising, and innovative.” —NEC videographer David Apostolides In the culmination concert for his Contemporary Improvisation residency at NEC, Tyshawn Sorey took the stage with Korean gayageum artist Do Yeon Kim, who received her Graduate Diploma from NEC in 2018. Do Yeon is a frequent collaborator with Contemporary Improvisation faculty members Anthony Coleman and Joe Morris. “There is something awesomely confounding about the music of Tyshawn Sorey, the thirty-eight-year-old Newark-born composer, percussionist, pianist, and trombonist. As a critic, I feel obliged to describe what I hear, and description usually begins with categorization. Sorey’s work eludes the pinging radar of genre and style. Is it jazz? New classical music? Composition? Improvisation? Tonal? Atonal? Minimal? Maximal? Each term captures a part of what So