(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Mark Swed - Contact Reporter
June 9, 2017
The Ojai Music Festival began Thursday night by demonstrating three sides of Vijay Iyer. There are more, which the festival promises to unveil over the weekend. But three is a start.
Iyer is the first jazz musician to be the festival’s music director. He comes from a long line of jazz musicians who have moved out of the category, notably back to Gershwin and Ellington, but with roots as far back as the 19th century Gottschalk. Indeed identity has been so much an issue of jazz for so long that many have come to dislike the term, stuck with it we pretty much are.
In Iyer’s afternoon talk Thursday, the elegant, soft-spoken 45-year-old pianist and Harvard professor cattily noted that he found music critics to be homogenous, no doubt a term of some disparagement for this multitasker. There is probably some truth to it, and he seems to know of which he speaks. The pressure for homogeny has ever been an obstacle for progressive jazz musicians who attempt to collaborate with the classical world.
Where do you find common ground that doesn’t lead, as it usually does, to bland homogeny? If uncommon is more productive, how do you get away with it?
The evening began with the American premiere of “Emergence,” in which Iyer’s jazz trio interacts with a chamber ensemble. The world premiere of what you might say is Iyer’s classical violin concerto, “Trouble,” with Jennifer Koh as the dazzling soloist, followed. After intermission, Iyer joined the great West Coast trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith for an intimate, meditative set of very personal, very jazz duos.
read more at: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-ojai-festival-opening-review-20170609-story.html
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