Ryan Clackner & Tyshawn Sorey
Ryan Clackner and Tyshawn Sorey have a surprising musical history going back to their college and high school years. Ryan was also in Tyshawn’s (first??) band Oblique for a time prior to his moving to Nashville. This will be their first performance together in 20 years. Their set will be a fully improvised journey criss-crossing worlds new to both them and the listener.
Ryan Clackner is a Knoxville, TN based guitarist/composer/songwriter/vocalist whose music is a wide ranging yet controlled blend of various extreme metal genres, multifaceted jazz influences, and country/American folk styles. He has a dozen bands and projects featuring his writing and playing, and currently releases most of his music through his label, Moonlight Cypress Archetypes. This is his second Big Ears performance.
2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey is celebrated for his extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work, while also offering incomparable virtuosity, and effortless mastery of highly complex scores. He has performed globally with his own ensembles, as well as alongside industry titans including John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, King Britt, Claire Chase, Roscoe Mitchell, and Steve Lehman, among many others.
As a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow, the bar is set high for Sorey’s continued evolution and success. His composition Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) was honored as a Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and has been recorded with the Houston Chamber Choir and DaCamera for release in 2024. Sorey received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Adagio (for Wadada Leo Smith). Adding to his reputation as a multi-faceted talent, Downbeat Magazine recognized Sorey with its 2023 Critics Poll Award as a Rising Star Producer, while frequently placing him near the top of its Composer and Drum Set performance lists. Other recent accolades include the Fromm Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, and the Koussevitzsky Prize.
