A Conversation With: Jazz Pianist Vijay Iyer

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

By VISI TILAK
October 31, 2013, 3:37 am

Vijay Iyer, 42, is an Indian-American jazz pianist and composer. His albums incorporate a mixture of traditional jazz, Indian classical fusion, and various other eclectic musical styles. Apart from producing music, Mr. Iyer also has a Ph.D in cognitive science of music and has written extensively on the relationship between music and society. Mr. Iyer was recently awarded the MacArthur Genius grant and appointed a professor in the department of music at Harvard University.

India Ink spoke to Mr. Iyer about his music, his collaborations and his journey.

Q.

You had formal violin training. But the piano?

A.

I taught myself the piano because there was one in our house that belonged to my older sister. I had 15 years of formal education in violin, I started when I was about 3, and later on I was performing in organized settings. I had a lot of help. However this was not teaching me to be very creative and was teaching me to perform western classical music in the way it was supposed to be performed. My high school violin teacher helped me with a more creative perspective.

Q.

When did you get into jazz?

A.

I skipped grades to graduate high school at 16. At this time I started exploring jazz. I was listening to a lot of John Coltrane and others, and I was also listening to a lot of Indian classical music that I grew up with. I was composing my own music at this point, and getting ready for college as well.

Q.

Where was college, and what happened there?

A.

I got a B.S. in mathematics and physics from Yale College, and a masters in physics and an interdisciplinary Ph.D from the University of California in Berkeley. When I enrolled in the Ph.D program to study math and physics, I was performing jazz piano professionally more and more. I was being presented in music festivals and invited to perform at clubs and concerts.

In 1995, I was coming out with my first solo album, I was putting together music. Because of the opportunities presenting themselves, I decided to switch from a Ph.D in math and physics to one in the cognitive science of music from the University of California at Berkeley. I took the leap. Somehow I managed to pull it all together.

Q.

In an essay, “New York Stories,” you wrote, “We don’t play “in a genre”; we play in the context of others, and we find ways to play with each other.” Can you describe how you have broken out of your “genre”?

A.

It’s exactly that mentality. All the choices I make as an artist are inspired by the history of this music and this musical community that I’m a part of. And if you look at that history you see that it was always very smooth in terms of stylistic attributes and what was common was this collaborative orientation and a community orientation. It was something that contained a lot of experimentation and a lot of discipline, a lot of knowledge, and it sort of formed at the intersection of a lot of different extremes of knowledge.

People think of it as a genre but for the community of artists there’s really no such a thing. That’s sort of been my experience working with elders from that heritage and from that history. But it’s always been a space for collaboration and creation that is irrespective of marketplace notions of genre. That comes from a place of invention and collaboration and so then it’s not really about, it was never about obeying some externally imposed boundary or something like that. I just see myself in that same continuum doing those same kinds of things.