High Schoolers Get In on Tyshawn Sorey’s Latest Music

Pleasant spring weather warmed the grounds of Girard College here on a recent afternoon. But even when classes were canceled over the weekend, some seniors at this boarding school still had a few hours of work ahead of them.

In the school’s gymnasium, which is dedicated to children from single-parent and zero-parent families from underserved communities, five teenagers gathered around the stands.

Nearby, in the middle of the basketball court, contemporary classic group Yarn/Wire began a sound check while director Brooke O’Harra consulted with a theater engineering team nearby, who oversaw audio amplification and video projections. But she quickly broke away to greet the entering students. A few minutes later composer Tyshawn Sorey consulted with the instrumentalists.

They had all gathered for one of the final rehearsals of their years-in-development multimedia adaptation of Ross Gay’s book-length poem “Be Holding,” which premieres Wednesday at the gym — featuring movement, music and behind-the-scenes work by the school’s students .

Gay’s lyrics are nominally about a balletic baseline shot from the 1980 NBA Finals, improvised and performed by Philadelphia 76ers star Julius Erving (known as Dr. J); But it’s also about the legacy of the black genius off the field and notions of community, or their faltering absence, in the United States.

Adeshina Tejan, 16, a Girard sophomore who brings movement to the production, praised Gay’s poetry and said he particularly appreciates “the way he can jump from topic to topic.” But you still feel like he’s still talking about ‘the shot’ even when he’s talking about other situations.”

18-year-old senior Jaelyn Handy, who provides both movement and the ringing of a tubular bell alongside the members of Yarn/Wire, named a passage that has little to do with basketball as one of her favorites. “The part of the poem where he describes a picture — and it’s a picture of a girl, and the girl falls in love with her godmother,” she said. “This is striking because of the level of detail that is given. And the background information on how to photograph Black Pain: That was profound!”

After the show’s performances this week, it could be shown elsewhere, including in New York. In this case, Gay may also participate in the recitation of his poem. In Philadelphia, the production will enlist the talents of local poets Yolanda Wisher and David A. Gaines as keynote speakers and movement artists.

As the afternoon rehearsal gave way to a run around 8 p.m., Wisher and Gaines presented excerpts of the lyrics to perform as spoken word solos; At other times, they repeated each other or uttered identical phrases in alternating patterns. At times, the student employees imitated basketball shots as a dancer ensemble; at others, they contributed cascading individual vocalizations that mirrored the lines read aloud by the adult performers.

During a dinner break, Wisher—a longtime friend of Gay’s—said that the poem’s imagery by Dr.

“There’s something about that poem on the page that’s still overpowering when you read it cover to cover,” Wisher said. “He changes the times: you change from the Middle Passage to a Dr. J clip. I think this is about how to communicate that acoustically and not cinematically.”

While eating a burger, she added, “Oftentimes we’re working against the music rather than trying to float on top of it — which is sometimes exactly what poets and spoken-word artists do.”

In the piece, Yarn/Wire’s two pianists and two drummers interpret what Sorey calls a “living score”: sections of written-out material that can be juggled or adjusted at will. After Friday’s rehearsal, Russell Greenberg of the group wrote in an email: “In ‘New Music’ we are used to fully notated scores or instructions (this is related to CONTROL). But I’ve come to think of the music in this piece as an “energy map”: made up of different setups; dense; Ebb and flow; tonal/chromatic; metal/wood; expanded/traditional etc. They all work together to push and tug the text.”

Sorey’s music here revels in dreamy unison as Gay’s first detailed description of Dr. J’s ride to the basket. But while the poem explores tangential ideas and metaphorical asides, Sorey’s score leans toward chromaticism—while also harnessing the power of Yarn/Wire with the experimental techniques Greenberg mentioned in his email. Later there is a return to the blissful energy of the beginning as the lyrics of “Be Holding” land on its expanded notion of communal joy.

In a phone interview, Sorey congratulated Yarn/Wire on his ability to break down his personal language of conducted improvisations, known as autoschediasms, and apply them to this new “quote-unquote score” to the point where he doesn’t even do it anymore must direct the music.

He said that the inclusion of the Girard students “makes the poem even more powerful as they perform the movements and as they engage in some of the conversational parts of the poem.”

“It amplifies the positive spirit it has; it gives him a different character,” added Sorey. “I think if it was just the poetry and the music, maybe it wouldn’t affect me in the same way.”

O’Harra said her vision for Gay’s poem “starts out very simply: we’re in a gym, there’s a person talking,” and then develops an unusual mix of elements. (Itohan Edoloyi designed the lighting. Matthew Deinhart and artist Catching on Thieves designed the video together; Eugene Lew is the sound designer.)

“You think almost mathematically about all these layers,” O’Harra said. “And then something nails you and you want to cry. Or you really feel moved. That’s what I love.”