Unlike most musicians today who pass through the higher-education system, Mr. Sorey doesn’t come from an upper-middle-class background. He grew up in the heart of Newark, attending public schools where arts education was sparse. His father helped foster his affinity for music, playing him all kinds of records and helping him build makeshift drum kits.

Mr. Sorey largely taught himself to play the piano in the basement of his church. He picked up the trombone because it was one of the few instruments available at his middle school. At Newark Arts High School, he was finally able to explore the drums more thoroughly; by the time he was a sophomore, he was playing R&B in area groups.

He entered William Paterson University as a classical trombone major, and professors recognized immediately that he had a bevy of gifts. He often placed out of classes, then used that time to study on his own. When he applied to transfer into an open spot to study jazz drumming, he was accepted over a half-dozen other applicants.

Mr. Sorey soon joined ensembles led by the pianist Vijay Iyer and the saxophonist Steve Coleman, and began an informal apprenticeship with the musician Butch Morris. A cornetist and composer, Morris is known for his system of “conduction,” which involves directing an ensemble of improvisers with a set of gestural cues, the conductor and instrumentalists creating a composition together in real time.

Years later, in graduate school at Wesleyan, Mr. Sorey studied under Mr. Braxton, a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, whose compositions use a colorful notation system that ignores the strictures of standard staves. (The association, founded in Chicago in 1965, aims to nurture visionary black composers without accommodating the classical or jazz establishments.)