ADAM PENDLETON
RE-INVITES
MATANA ROBERTS AND TYSHAWN SOREY
RE-INVITES
MATANA ROBERTS AND TYSHAWN SOREY
Friday,
March 13, 2026
6:30
Doors
7pm
Event begins
Limited capacity, a few standby tickets may become available at the door
March 13, 2026
6:30
Doors
7pm
Event begins
Limited capacity, a few standby tickets may become available at the door
While preparing his What Is Queen? exhibition at MoMA in 2021, the artist Adam Pendleton convened and recorded a series of conversations between pairs of notable writers and musicians. Via his own DABA Press, he published a series of elegant thin hard-cover books, where edited transcriptions were intertwined with archival photographs and additional writings. DABA’s core interest, he would say, was the relationships between conceptual practices, Blackness, and historical avant-gardes.
Volume 5 is a conversation between two musicians: Matana Roberts and Tyshawn Sorey.
Volume 5 is a conversation between two musicians: Matana Roberts and Tyshawn Sorey.
For this event, Adam picks up where that conversation left off and expands on how two people might be able to talk to each other—by exchanging words, yes, but also by sharing sounds and by performing music together.
Adam asks Matana and Tyshawn about what it could mean to pluralize the concept of the “avant-garde” and imagine many types of avant-gardes. About how abstraction can be not just a model for resistance but a mechanism for imagining alternative realities and futures. About experimentation as survival.
After the discussion, Matana and Tyshawn perform a live improvised set, with Matana on saxophone and Tyshawn on drums.
This event is made possible with the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
Adam asks Matana and Tyshawn about what it could mean to pluralize the concept of the “avant-garde” and imagine many types of avant-gardes. About how abstraction can be not just a model for resistance but a mechanism for imagining alternative realities and futures. About experimentation as survival.
After the discussion, Matana and Tyshawn perform a live improvised set, with Matana on saxophone and Tyshawn on drums.
This event is made possible with the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
Adam Pendleton is an artist who works to redefine abstract and process-based painting. In 2024, he was honored with the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recent solo exhibitions include the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2025); mumok, Vienna (2023); Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2023); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, (2022); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021). He lives in New York.
An internationally celebrated musician and interdisciplinary artist, Matana Roberts explores the mystical roots and intuitive, spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression. Working across sound, performance, text, and visual form, Roberts creates immersive works that blend improvisation and composition across mediums to engage history, narrativity, and political expression. Their innovative approach treats improvisation as a living archive, challenging linear histories and opening space for collective memory, intuition, and radical possibility.
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey 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. He was named the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music winner after being recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Finalist. Previously, Sorey roared onto the international landscape as a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Sorey joined the composition faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall of 2020.
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey 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. He was named the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music winner after being recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Finalist. Previously, Sorey roared onto the international landscape as a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Sorey joined the composition faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall of 2020.
Due to the age and character of the building, the space is not optimized for ADA accessibility and is located up a single flight of 20 stairs with handrails. If you have questions about access, please contact us in advance of the event, and we will make every effort to accommodate you.
