Vijay Iyer, Vortext Jazz Club, review

By Ivan Hewett

Young American pianist Vijay Iyer has been causing quite a stir in the US, with awards raining down on all sides for his new album Solo. So it was a surprise to see his slight, determinedly modest figure picking its way through the packed chairs at the Vortex Jazz Club, en route to the piano at the front. Once seated Iyer plays like a man who doesn’t want to be noticed, head down, eyes closed, absolutely lost in the music.

But goodness what a big and complicated personality emerges, the minute he starts to play. Iyer is the son of recent Indian immigrants to the US, and his ancestral culture is very much alive in him. “Patterns", one of the several original numbers he played, muses on the ancient South Indian practice of tracing geometric patterns in rice powder.

It pre-figures an existence beyond our earthly one, and Iyer’s piece had a lovely sense of other-worldly aspiration. It was engendered partly by the fluttering piano textures (Iyer likes to keep a busy left hand circling in the middle, while the right darts above and below) but also by a very sharp harmonic intelligence. He coloured the palette with “wrong” notes reminiscent of an Indian raga, which sometimes yielded to the drone that “anchored” them, and sometimes broke away.

Complete on  >>  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/live-music-reviews/8201961/Vijay-Iyer-Vortext-Jazz-Club-review.html