Temporal Stream of Consciousness: A Conversation with Tyshawn Sorey

Few concepts so profoundly shape the human experience yet remain as elusive as time. Without a linear conception of it, humanity struggles to make sense of the world. Global economies, historical narratives, and even sporting events depend upon seconds gradually turning into hours, days, years, centuries, and ages. And yet, as Lao Tzu observed over two and a half millennia ago, “Time is a created thing.” Centuries later, Albert Einstein described time as an illusion. Even the classic jazz-rock band Chicago questioned the idea of linear time, asking, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” Tyshawn Sorey’s Members … Don’t! (Pi, 2026) turns these questions into sonic reality. Much has been, and will be, said by critics about the album. They will point to its historical lineage and rightly laud it as one of the finest albums of 2026. But too often lost in those analyses is what the album reveals, on a deeper level, about the meaning of time and those of us living within it.

To some extent, chronology is an inescapable element of Members … Don’t!. At the album’s heart lies an older one: Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary (Atlantic, 1968). Roach’s work came at a pivotal moment in America: Dr. King’s assassination, riots across the country, chaos at the Democratic National Convention, and a quagmire in Vietnam. The year before humanity’s dream of stepping onto the moon became a reality, the nation that sent the spacecraft there was in turmoil. In selecting Roach’s Members to “reimagine”—a term whose flaws become readily apparent below—Sorey inescapably links the lineage of today’s civil rights movement to that of more than half a century ago. Black Lives Matter and other movements did not emerge in a vacuum but instead are a natural progression of what came before, and Sorey’s work reflects upon this, just as Roach’s album also drew from a slave song. Even the respective bands reflect a generational evolution, with both featuring artists younger than the group’s leader.

But does time really run in a perfectly straight line? The idea that history “rhymes” or “repeats itself” implies a circularity. It suggests that some facets are like a funhouse-mirrored return to the original; things are not exactly the same, but eerily close. Sorey’s work reflects this facet of time as well. He easily could have chosen to perform his renditions of Roach’s pieces in the exact same order. Instead, they are shuffled into a flow more representative of the here and now. Their compositional essences are retained but changed and morphed into new directions. Most notably,  “Equipoise” stretches into two long tracks. One cannot help but find poignancy in this expansion. Titled after the idea of a balancing force, one can perceive Stanley Cowell’s version on Roach’s singular album as a statement of gratitude toward the generations who struggled against societal evils to reach the Civil Rights era, even if the work remains unfinished. By splitting it into two, perhaps Sorey does the same, extending appreciation to Roach’s generation as well. The thought translates musically, too, with Lex Korten’s cycled piano refrain at the end of “Equipoise, Pt. 1” suggesting how some things remain unchanged in society. But it also markedly points to how, by drawing out the hues of the minimalism of artists like Julius Eastman and a generation of hip-hop samplers, the responses to those evils have indeed changed.

So, what shape does time take: a firm line or an arching circle? At a cursory level, it seems Sorey’s work suggests both are equally valid perspectives. In large part, this broadened view comes from the approach Sorey himself takes to time. As a master drummer, it is easy to label Sorey’s role as that of a timekeeper, someone who keeps the ensemble moving forward at the agreed-upon tempo. As anyone familiar with the MacArthur genius’s work can tell you, however, he never confines himself solely to that conventional role. Sorey is more than a drummer; he is first and foremost a creator. Sometimes that means keeping the rhythmic flame alive. Sometimes it means serving as a composer. Or a philosopher. Or a historian. Or an activist. Like Max Roach before him, Sorey knows the drum kit is more than a purely rhythmic tool. It is a messenger for the artist’s broader perspectives. And, like the master before him, he recognizes that as much can be said in the application of heavy strikes as in the silence their absence leaves behind. Where “Effi,” at its most boiling moments, hammers you into the ground, the beginning of the album’s opening track, “Abstrusions,” offers only subtle cymbal hits that permit space to fill the room.

But what is the relationship between space and time? How can time be both a straight line and a circle? Perhaps a return to one of the greatest minds of the modern era is instructive. In his theory of the relativity of simultaneity, Einstein argued that two events that seem simultaneous to one observer may not, in fact, be simultaneous to another. There is no absolute “now” in the universe. Time is in the eye of the beholder.

More than any other explanation, this theory explains Sorey’s view of the duality of time as both a circle and a line. We are indebted to the past, but the vestiges of the problems it left unresolved continue to force us in circles as we strive toward dreams yet to be accomplished. It is only through active, open, and communal conversation – as Sorey, Korten, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, tenor saxophonist Mark Shim, bassist Tyrone Allen II, and vocalist Fay Victor experienced in their freely flowing dialogue at the Jazz Gallery on the night captured on Members … Don’t! – that we can stop spiraling and simply progress. Only then can we reach a time for change. A time to move beyond the follies and flaws of yesteryear. As compelling as it is to look backward, the most powerful message of Members… Don’t! is where we go from here. Sorey’s album provides a roadmap, passed through generations and reinterpreted for our time, toward a worthy future.

PostGenre: The Adornment of Time (Pi, 2019) treats time as something to meditate on. Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) invites new perspectives on time and space. With Members … Don’t!, you connect back to Max Roach’s album from 1968, but in a way that directly ties to today. And you have also explored things like moving by breath. That all raises a larger question: what is time to you?

Tyshawn Sorey: Time is something that we can never, in a lot of ways, do without. But at the same time, especially when it comes to the idea of immersing yourself in a situation – being musical, or whatever – sometimes I don’t like to think of time as necessarily existing.

You’re in another world when you’re in the process of creating an unbreakable bond on stage in real time. Especially when you are with musicians you admire and respect. In that sense, trust and time interact with each other in a really deep way. And so, whenever I’m on stage with other people, time is out the window for me.

Of course, we know physically the amount of time we have to do something. If we’re performing a set of music, somebody will be like, “Well, you have an hour to perform,” or whatever the length of the set is. That exists. But once we’re on stage, we’re not counting clock time.

I would say we have a situation where time doesn’t necessarily have to exist when we are on stage. But my thing is, what do you do with how time passes? As time passes, how does that affect some of the musical decisions you make? Those are the things I think about. And that is different from [Newtonian] clock time.

PG: It sounds like you adopt Einstein’s perspective that there is a relationship between time and matter and that time is perceived differently by the perceiver; it is not linear.

TS: Yeah, I would say that’s more of the case. In my view, time is a much broader thing than most think of it.

PG: Going back, you were fourteen years old when you first encountered Members Don’t Git Weary. What most stood out to you about the recording?

TS: I remember exactly what it was like listening to that album after taking history courses and things of that sort. I’ve never looked at Max Roach as a drummer alone. Obviously, he played drums. But in terms of what he was able to contribute, not only to the music itself, but also to social and political discussions and everything else surrounding the music, he was more than that. To me, he was the civil rights movement, if you want to put it that way. He was one of the key representatives of what that was, even before we came to know of it. Twenty or thirty years before the height of the Movement in the 1960s, he was addressing the same issues. He was ahead of the game in terms of bringing conversations to the table about all the shit that’s been going on in America with systemic racism and things of that sort. Max was a champion of the idea of saying, “Look, America, get your shit together. Let’s do away with all of this.”

By the time I listened to Members Don’t Git Weary when I was a teenager, I already knew who he was and what he stood for. I was already familiar with things like Drums Unlimited (Atlantic, 1965). I wasn’t familiar with WE INSIST! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960), yet. But I was already with his other recordings, and they were incredible to me. I wasn’t necessarily listening to Max Roach on a lot of those records for the drumming alone. I’ve listened to get the greater messages within some of those songs. And, so, I encountered Members the same way when I first heard it.

But I also remember the way that the album was mixed and how the drums sounded. My uncle, a DJ, had a pretty big sound system. One time, I snuck in and heard that record on his sound system. The way the drums sounded was incredible. The drum solo he takes on “Libra” sounds like he’s talking directly to you. It is like he’s yelling at you. As if he’s literally speaking out against a lot of what was going on at that time.

PG: It is a very visceral recording

TS: My experiences with the recording were totally visceral. And it featured really badass musicians, of course. It was an incredible work done by all those cats. The compositions were so beautiful. The record was my first introduction to Stanley Cowell, whom I would hear about some years later from a couple of people in the Jersey jazz scene who went on to do some incredible work with him.

But my initial encounter with the record was super visceral, and that was something I’ll never forget. Especially for the title track, with Andy Bey’s singing a text that came from a Southern slave song. Tracing back historically the story of Southern slave songs in the United States, it was amazing how Andy basically personified that entire thing. But all of the compositions on the album, while they weren’t necessarily always intended to make a “political” statement, the way that the musicians performed was very much in response to the times that they were in. The compositions really spoke to the listener. It was a respite from all the shit that was going on in 1968. But at the same time, it was also saying, “Okay, look, this is what we’re dealing with and here are our frustrations, now on the record. Our experiences as musicians are not separate from our experiences in real life.” But when I was asked to “reimagine” – a term overused quite a lot these days – the album for this project, I first thought of those visceral experiences I experienced as a teenager.

PG: Did you ever get to see Max perform?

TS: In the late 90s, Amiri Baraka and Max Roach did a project together in which I was a participant. I don’t want to say the project was poetry and music. It was a coming together of these different genres. And Max was the featured performer.

I didn’t get to ask Max a bunch of questions. Simply being around him was enough. I knew what kind of history I was around and the amazing contributions he had made to the art form. I had spent a lot of time with Amiri Baraka, discussing maximalist music from his context and from the context of celebrating the Black agenda. Dealing with things about self-determination and resilience. Black resilience. Black art and more. So, I already knew a lot about how Max revolutionized the canon of so-called contemporary percussion music.

And that was the direction that I felt that I thought the music should go. It was what I wanted to do in my own career. It goes beyond solely the idea of sitting down and playing drums. You can do that. That’s cool. But what message are you wanting to convey when you do that? By being around people who spent a lot of time with Max, wrote a lot about his work, and who rehearsed and spent a lot of time with him, I got some of the most informative moments I’ve ever had in making music.

That experience led me to revisit Members Don’t Git Weary and even further understand the meaning behind it. That led me to a lot of the thoughts I have now about the record and why it’s still relevant. It is almost sixty years old, but it feels even more relevant now than it was then. So, when I was commissioned to write something to celebrate Max Roach’s centennial, I knew which album of his that I wanted to visit. Given what’s going on in the world today and my visceral reactions to one of Max’s most revolutionary statements on record, it was a no-brainer to pick Members Don’t Git Weary.

PG: As a forward-thinking composer, is it more difficult for you to build off of an existing work as with Members, or to start a project from scratch?

TS: I did initially have some difficulty at first in looking back. But the more I thought about the project, the idea came that if Max Roach were alive today, what would he say about something I would do with the project? Knowing how forward-looking he was when it came to moving the tradition forward in a way that both celebrates and departs from so-called norms in the tradition, I started thinking about what he would think of what is happening today. How would he interpret this music today? One thing I know for sure is that he wouldn’t be doing the same thing that he did sixty years ago. His music would sound completely different in a lot of ways. Based on that thought, I considered that the intent behind the project is not for me to go in and copy something else or redo what he did long ago. Nor is it to try to pander in any way to the audience who knows Max’s work. My intention was instead to do my own thing with the material and to present the music in a way that is contemporaneous with our times. And that means taking in many different traditions, not solely so-called “jazz.” You look at the many different facets of the music and deal with them in a way that puts into motion other ways of hearing the music without necessarily trying to do the same thing that those guys do on their record. That was my guiding principle to the project: Would Max be happy if I played everything in the same track order, the musicians took the solos in the same exact order, and everything was always in accordance with how those musicians did it in the day?. The answer for me, obviously, was no.

PG: That looking at different traditions ties into your trans-idiomatic practice. How does that practice shape your approach to artistic freedom or responsibility to avoid the boxes that people like to force on art?

TS: I don’t even think about the boxes. I act like they don’t exist. I think that’s a big reason why I’m able to do what I do and why a lot of people who came before me were able to do what they did. We all refuse to see these boxes for whatever they were worth, which is nothing at the end of the day. Branford Marsalis once said something very interesting that I have taken with me, that “We create the boxes. The boxes don’t exist.” We are the ones who can create these boxes, and it’s up to us whether we choose to operate within them. We, the artists, have that choice.

And it’s not wrong to choose either way. If a musician wants to operate within a certain framework and be specialized within a certain type of box, more power to them. At the same time, not operating within these boxes can also be a box in and of itself anyway. I just do what I do and learn from the different musical practices and the individual composers and performers who go about defining their own terms. In a lot of ways, I’d like to say that I’m defining my own terms of how the music should be accepted, how it should be heard, and how it should be listened to.

People are always gonna try to pigeonhole you. They will try to put you in a certain type of framework. But you just ignore it, make what you make, and hope that people will accept it for what it is, rather than what they think it is supposed to be.

But I stopped thinking about all of that very long ago. My music is ultimately an extension of my upbringing as a person who just loves to enjoy music. It comes from the person who listens to things like WKCR all the time or listened to WBGO back when it was a jazz station. Growing up, I listened to many different kinds of music, even music that I didn’t fully understand for a while. I listened to everything for what it was. I became aware of categories of music only as I got older. The splitting of music into genres bothered me. I just kept on listening the way I always did. And still do. My perspective carries over into how I think about and compose music. It also carries into how I engage with particular musical mediums that people may or may not identify me with. To me, it is all an appreciation of all things music and not merely a recognition of the tradition of music to which I belong.

PG: So, do you see a significant difference between composition and improvisation? Your Pulitzer Prize winning work, “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)” is dedicated to an artist who sees both composition and improvisation as simply creation. Do you see a difference between those things?

TS: No, it’s all creation to me as well. In fact, I think that’s probably the best way to describe what we do. Even away from instruments, you’re creating. You’re putting things together. You’re finding ways to deal with your time, and that’s an act of composition too. I used to distinguish between spontaneous composition and formal composition, but even that separated things a  little.

Spontaneous composition, by definition, is composition that is done in the very moment without pre-planning. It is still a form of composition. Many people have argued that formalized composition is valued over improvisation because it is “academicized” and spontaneous composition is not. But that’s not necessarily the case at all. A lot of so-called formal composition also comes from urban communities, places that too many people tend to devalue.

There is a logic that comes with composition and the way that things are put together. But who judges that logic? Who is supposed to judge whether something is logical or illogical? Finally, I just said, “Well, if you frame it as creation, it’s simply what we do.” We’re creating at all times, whether reading a piece of sheet music or creating an interpretation of what that music is according to our experiences. You are creating whether you are playing according to what a composer wants or what you as a performer want. All creation is equally valuable in my opinion.

PG: To go back to how you wanted Members … Don’t! to reflect our times, is the fact that it’s a live recording play into that at all too?

TS: Oh yeah, big time. First of all, I think people need to experience this music, and they can do that more easily live. I don’t think a lot of people are necessarily familiar with Max’s record. To my surprise, I find that when I talk with audience members at our shows, they often know of Max Roach’s music and his contributions to the medium. But sometimes they aren’t hip to Members Don’t Git Weary. They are more familiar with his other albums. It is important to me, as both a person and as a champion of Max Roach’s work, that people learn about his album. Experiencing our own approach to the music in a live setting does that.

The funny thing is that we were initially going to do a studio recording. I didn’t intend to put out a live recording at all. Instead, I saw the live performances as an opportunity to prepare for a studio recording that would happen at a later date. When we had booked a week-long run at The Jazz Gallery, the plan was to do the concerts and then, three or four weeks down the line, record in the studio.

But as we were listening back to the recordings we took at the Jazz Gallery, every concert we gave there went so well. There was no way we would be able to capture the same level of energy in a recording studio with everything super high-fidelity and technically perfect. No, I wanted to hear the imperfections. I wanted to hear mistakes. I wanted a certain freshness to the music that we probably wouldn’t be able to achieve in a recording studio. And so, when I listened to these recordings afterwards, I had asked for the multi-track files. And after I heard those, it became immediately apparent that everybody was so immersed in what was going on in the music. Everybody played their ass off and came at it really hard. But you could also feel the spirit in the room.  There’s something about the recording coming from a continuous live performance that immerses the listener right away. It becomes a lot more immediate when you’re in a single stream of consciousness the entire time.

This goes back to your first question about time, right? You don’t get the same psychological, spiritual, metaphysical, or whatever you want to call it, effect when you’re breaking songs up. When you make the lines between songs too clear, everything gets too broken up.

PG: You’re breaking up a natural energy.

TS: Exactly. So after listening to the live recording, I decided to put it out instead of a studio album because I want the listener to experience a stream of consciousness way of looking at things too, as opposed to some broken up songs from a recording session. And that approach also differs in a lot of ways from Max’s album, where everything was captured in a recording studio, and the tracks are separate. That’s not to say that approach is bad.

PG: It’s simply a different approach.

TS: It’s a different approach, yeah. I felt that keeping that stream was a lot more potent for what we were going for.

PG: Compositionally, is your approach when you’re building off of something that already exists similar to if you were starting from scratch on your own composition? For instance, was your approach to composing Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) similar to working on Members … Don’t!?

TS: It’s the same approach. Whether I am working with my own original material or something from something else, they both come from the same place in a philosophical sense, even if not in a material one. Both come down to immersion. If I am working off of someone else’s recording, I listen to that recording over and over and over and over and over and try to find things in it that I like. I try to find things in it that I could maybe do without or could transform in my own way.

As for my own sense of creating music in real time, for different musicians who are able to be trustworthy on a bandstand, I consider all of these different things as operating within and against each other in a lot of ways.

PG: How important was it that most of the particular musicians on Members … Don’t! are younger than you? It is interesting how Max looked back to a slave song, you look back to him, and you have younger musicians working with you. It portrays a generational progression.

TS: Actually, that is a coincidence, but I also see the parallel too. Fay Victor is older than I am. And so is Mark Shim. But the rest of the band is younger. Interestingly, that also parallels Max’s working with younger artists on Members Don’t Git Weary. Gary Bartz, Stanley Cowell, and Charles Tolliver, all of these guys, were younger than Max when they worked with him, too. But it was a coincidence.

PG: As a concluding thought, we have discussed the historical lines that run through Max’s album and now, by extension, Members… Don’t! as well. Generations from now, what do you hope young composers can take from what you have done with the record that they can use to continue on their own path?

TS: I think history is important. I hope that future composers come to an understanding of history and are able to see how some aspects of history repeat themselves. How do you take history and create a work informative of that fact while directing it personally to your own experiences? I think that is how we should all be looking at history. It is not just something in the past but something that continues to endure. Only by tackling it can we continue to make things better.

‘Members… Don’t!’ is out now on Pi Recordings. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.  You can learn more about Tyshawn Sorey on his website. You can also read Jim Hynes’ review of ‘Members … Don’t!’ here.