Autoschediasms

Präsentation des Workshops mit Tyshawn Sorey und Kobe Van Cauwenberghe
Presentation of the workshop with Tyshawn Sorey and Kobe Van Cauwenberghe

Mit Teilnehmer:innen der Darmstädter Ferienkurse
With participants of the Darmstadt Summer Course

Tyshawn Sorey is a phenomenon: anyone who has ever seen him drumming live on stage will find such pure energy hard to forget. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music 2024 is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composition professor, conductor, and bandleader – in other words, a universal artistic personality. This year will be Sorey’s second time as a composition tutor at the Darmstadt Summer Course. In addition to his composition lessons, he will also be realizing a large-scale concert project including Course participants and tutors based around his series of works Autoschediasms. Questions about notation and the boundaries between composition and improvisation will be addressed in a different way than in the first time (2023) with Anthony Braxton’s work. A congenial partner in this project is the Braxton-proofed Belgian guitarist and researcher Kobe Van Cauwenberghe.

In Autoschediasms, named after the ancient Greek word for ‟extemporize”, Sorey works with a large ensemble (or orchestra) and manages without a pre-written score. Instead, he acts as both composer and conductor, guiding the ensemble via a series of cues, gestures, and instructions in real-time. This method gives the musicians a high degree of interpretative freedom, as – although they are given certain parameters or guidelines – they can make creative decisions in the moment. Each performance of an ‟autoschediasm” is unique, shaped by the interaction between the conductor and the musicians, as well as the particular performance situation. Sorey’s approach challenges traditional notions of composition, performance, and the role of the conductor, creating a dynamic space in which improvisation and composition merge.