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NPR Music: Tyshawn Sorey’s powerful sounds of silence | Amplify with Lara Downes

Tyshawn Sorey stole the show at Big Ears Festival with Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), a haunting tribute to the Rothko Chapel’s pitch-black canvases and Morton Feldman’s 1971 score. By ditching familiar song structures, he crafts a slowly unfolding soundscape where every silence and subtle shift feels electric—just like standing inside one of Rothko’s color fields as sunlight creeps through the skylight.

Bass-baritone Davóne Tines calls those gaps “places of reflection and rest,” and he’s right: Sorey’s use of space gives you a blissful timeout from our nonstop, hyper-connected world. It’s less about filling every second with noise and more about letting the quiet do the heavy lifting.

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