FREE WORKSHOPS: Unlocking Your Inner Composer with PRISM Quartet, Diane Monroe, Ursula Rucker, and Tyshawn Sorey at the Free Library of Philadelphia

October 18 – November 24, 2025

Unlocking Your Inner Composer is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with groundbreaking artists to bring your musical story to life.

PRISM Quartet, a world-renowned all-saxophone ensemble, is joining forces with violinist and Pew Fellow Diane Monroe, poet/vocalist and Pew Fellow Ursula Rucker, and percussionist and Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey to teach a series of free workshops at the Free Library of Philadelphia. You’ll create music for these artists to perform. The workshops culminate in free public concerts featuring world premieres of compositions by participants.

Workshops are open to teens and adults at all levels, whether you are just starting out, or you’re a pro in search of new techniques and challenges. You don’t need to know how to read music to join in the fun. Want to perform your music with the artists? Bring your own instrument or borrow one from the Parkway Central Library music department. (Click HERE to learn about borrowing an instrument.)

Unlocking Your Inner Composer consists of three series of workshops (four workshops per series, see the schedule below). Workshops will be held at the Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Philadelphia Regional Library in Germantown (in Northwest Philadelphia). Concerts premiering the works will be held at Parkway Central Library in Center City.

Space is limited. In order to accommodate as many aspiring composers as possible from a wide range of communities served by the Free Library, prospective participants are asked to complete a simple application form (link below). The application deadline is September 15, 2025 with notification on October 1, 2025. If accepted, participants will be grouped by level and will be required to attend all four workshops and one concert within their series.

APPLY: Click here to complete the application form to participate (link available August 20).

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS
Unlocking Your Inner Composer consists of:
1) Demonstrations: PRISM, Monroe, Rucker, and Sorey will perform a wide range of works, explain stylistic features of each, and discuss the unique properties of their instruments/voice.
2) Fundamentals of Music: discussion and demonstrations of specific elements of composition: melody, harmony, rhythm, articulation, dynamics, extended techniques, improvisation, form, lyrics and setting text, and how to organize and develop musical ideas;
3) Notation: discussion and hand-outs of graphic notation, a system for communicating musical ideas without standard notation, to enable participants’ compositions (participants who know how to read music may use standard notation);
4) Big Picture: Monroe, Rucker, and Sorey and PRISM Quartet members will discuss elements of successful collaborations and how to develop your own distinctive voice as a composer.
5) Performance: PRISM, Monroe, Rucker, and Sorey will play participants’ compositions at public concerts following each series of workshops. The performances will be documented with professional audio and video recordings for the benefit of participants.

SCHEDULE
Reminder: participants are required to attend all four workshops and one concert within their series.

Workshops: Unlocking Your Inner Composer
Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Philadelphia Regional Library
68 W Chelten Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19144

Each workshop will be 90-minutes in duration. Participants will be separated into three groups by level (Series A, B, and C) according to the following schedule:

1. Saturday, October 18, 2025
Series A: Beginner/Intermediate: 10:45 AM-12:15 PM
Series B: Advanced: 1:15-2:45 PM
Series C: Beginner/Intermediate: 3-4:30 PM

2. Saturday, October 25, 2025
Series A: Beginner/Intermediate: 10:45 AM-12:15 PM
Series B: Advanced: 1:15-2:45 PM
Series C: Beginner/intermediate: 3-4:30 PM

3. Saturday, November 1, 2025
Series A: Beginner/Intermediate: 10:45 AM-12:15 PM
Series B: Advanced: 1:15-2:45 PM
Series C: Beginner/Intermediate: 3-4:30 PM

4. Friday, Nov 21, 2025
Series A: Beginner/Intermediate: 10:45 AM-12:15 PM
Series B: Advanced: 1:15-2:45 PM
Series C: Beginner/Intermediate: 3-4:30 PM

Concerts: Unlocking Your Inner Composer
Montgomery Auditorium, Parkway Central Library
1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

The Free Library will present three concerts, one for each workshop series on:

Concert 1. Saturday, Nov 22, 2025 at noon (Series A: Beginner/intermediate)

Concert 2. Saturday, Nov 22, 2025 at 2:30 PM (Series B: Advanced)

Concert 3. Monday, Nov 24, 2025 at 6 PM (Series C: Beginner/intermediate)

APPLY: Click here to complete the application form to participate (link available August 20).

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

“A bold ensemble that set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets” (The New York Times), PRISM Quartet has been presented by Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia under the auspices of USIA and USArtists International. PRISM has also appeared as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute and the Oberlin Conservatory. Two-time recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, PRISM has commissioned over 300 works by eminent composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Susie Ibarra, Tyshawn Sorey, Julia Wolfe, William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands, and MacArthur Fellows George Lewis, Bright Sheng, and Miguel Zenón. PRISM’s discography is extensive, with releases on Albany, BCM&D, BMOP/Sound, ECM, innova, Koch International, Navona, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, Orange Mountain Music, and its own label, XAS Records. PRISM’s 2018 release with The Crossing of Gavin Bryars The Fifth Century won a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. PRISM Quartet performs exclusively on Selmer saxophones.

Diane Monroe bridges classical string repertoire, jazz and blues improvisation, African and African American musical traditions, and contemporary experimental music. Her cross-genre work has included engagements with artists and groups such as Bobby Zankel, Odean Pope, and John Blake; the Max Roach Double Quartet; Harlem Symphony Orchestra; and Bang on a Can All Stars. Monroe has been leading her own ensembles for more than 15 years, including The Diane Monroe Quartet and a duo with her longtime musical partner, vibraphonist Tony Miceli, with whom she released the album Alone Together in 2014. Monroe is a Philadelphia native and graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and University of the Arts. She has taught at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Swarthmore College, Lehigh University and Temple University. Monroe is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Ursula Rucker is a poet, performer, and recording artist who has inspired listeners around the world for nearly three decades. She is a Philadelphia native and graduate of Temple University’s school of journalism. She has collaborated with musical artists King Britt, The Roots, 4Hero, Jazzanova, Louie Vega, Doodlebug of Digable Planets, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and more—as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Clarence Williams III.  She recently contributed to Aṣẹ: Afro Frequencies, an immersive and interactive digital art exhibit created by ARTECHOUSE in collaboration with Vince Fraser, a London-based Afro-surrealist digital artist and illustrator. About her practice, she writes “I stand for poetry as a source of profound truth. That truth, for me, is connected to the idea that cities are places that redeem our strivings and leave us longing; the ways family life shapes and shakes us, and brings us back; and the thought that artists safeguard stories and struggles.” Rucker is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

2024 Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as artists such as John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Claire Chase, Steve Lehman, Jason Moran, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, and Myra Melford. The New Yorker’s Alex Ross described him as “among the most formidable denizens of the in-between zone…An extraordinary talent who can see across the entire musical landscape.” Sorey has composed works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, ICE, soprano Julia Bullock, JACK Quartet, TAK Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and Opera Philadelphia in partnership with Carnegie Hall. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and Doris Duke Impact Award. He is Presidential Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also teaches in the department of Africana Studies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Unlocking Your Inner composer is presented by PRISM Quartet, Inc. and the Free Library of Philadelphia with generous support from the William Penn Foundation. Additional support comes from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Musical Fund Society.

SUPPORT PRISM QUARTET
PRISM Quartet counts on the support of individual donors to realize projects like Unlocking Your Inner Composer. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to PRISM Quartet’s nonprofit organization to support our concert series, educational programs, and commissioning and recording projects. Visit the Support page.