Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer

RT @natechinen: Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer. Not sure if you can tell, but they’re levitating. pic.twitter.com/9AoDZlnyWq

— Tony McGee (@mctony) March 25, 2019

Vijay Iyer is an acclaimed jazz pianist

Vijay Iyer, Lena Adasheva/Courtesy of the artist

August 26, 20178:03 AM ET
SCOTT SIMON

Vijay Iyer is an acclaimed jazz pianist, MacArthur winner and Harvard professor of music. His new album, recorded with a six-person band, is called Far From Over. With the band, he says, he wanted to write with "different dance rhythms and dance impulses" in mind; the record also reflects Iyer's belief that jazz is "a category that keeps shifting."

Iyer spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about his approach to jazz and the histories it carries. Hear the conversation at the audio link, or read on for an edited transcript.

Scott Simon: How did this group of musicians begin to come into your life, and how did you begin to play together?

Vijay Iyer: Well, I moved to New York about 19 years ago, and some of them I met not long after that. It's really come into its own; it has its own identity and its own way of working together — you know, that builds a certain kind of trust, a certain bond that I think is expressed in the music. And it sort of supports it, so that we're able to sometimes go out on a limb and do something a little bit wild. 

Going out on a limb: Isn't that what jazz is all about?

I don't know; I think that word gets used and overused and misused and kind of caricatured. I think of it as the history of a people, and the history of ideas, a history of defiance, a history of unity, a history of joy and transcendence — and also a history of responding to conditions of oppression and terror. So I always think about my relationship to that history as a South Asian-American, and I try to honor that history while still being myself.

read more at: http://www.npr.org/2017/08/26/545890108/vijay-iyer-on-jazz-s-history-of-defiance-his-influences-and-playing-in-a-sextet

Vijay Iyer jazzes up the Ojai Music Festival

(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

Vijay Iyer: Jazz Is 'The Music Of The People'

Published: 2015-01-09
Vijay Iyer speaks with missionary fervor about jazz.

For this young award-winning pianist and 2012 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant," playing jazz has little to do with fame.

“The arts are a life of service," Iyer said, speaking from his home in New York City.

“It's not just about success for yourself," he added. “If you look at the history of jazz, it's always been the music of the people."

The Vijay Iyer Trio will offer an admission-free concert at Clemson University's Brooks Center on Thursday.

The performance — featuring Iyer, bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Tyshawn Sorey — is part of center's celebrated Utsey Series.

Iyer, who also happens to be a Harvard professor, is one of the most prominent musicians in the jazz world today.


For Iyer, jazz is a musical form with a distinguished history that he always keeps in mind — whether he's performing or mentoring young musicians at Harvard.

read more: http://news.allaboutjazz.com/vijay-iyer-jazz-is-the-music-of-the-people.php

Trio 3 & Vijay Iyer, Wiring, album review

By Ivan Hewett, Jazz Critic
2:20PM BST 10 Sep 2014
The incandescent free jazz of late John Coltrane and Albert Ayler lives on, in Trio 3. In recent years, they’ve released a number of albums on the Intakt label with pianists who share their free spirit. On the latest they’re joined by Vijay Iyer, that intellectually self-aware pianist who unites a reverence for the American tradition with memories of his Indian parentage.

Iyer embraces to the visionary aesthetic of the Trio, which means he’s had to rein in his fascination with pattern and number. However it peeps out here and there, particularly in the repeating bass patterns of Slimm, the first movement of the Suite for Travyon (and Thousands More).

You’d expect anger in a piece in memory of the black teenager Travyon Martin, shot by a neighbourhood watchman in a case that’s still unresolved.

In fact it’s movingly restrained, and has a tone of stoic dignity. In Reggie Workman’s Willow Song Iyer often shadows Oliver Lake’s saxophone melody, before spinning off into some free-wheeling idea of his own. The effect is of something so big it casts a soft-edged shadow. As always with this trio, the blues is never far away, and the pull between that earthiness and the music’s freewheeling impulse is fascinating.
read more: http://news360.com/digestarticle/O58LVXZpRUOcnCl8klVMSQ

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.

Rez Abassi and Vijay Iyer transform jazz

By Vyjayanthi Vadrevu

PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 12, 2012

Last Sunday's concert at McAllister Auditorium, Invocation, was the brainchild of jazz composer and guitarist Rez Abassi, who brilliantly used the Pakistani Sufi musical form, qawwali, as a palette to color American jazz with subcontinental moods. He was accompanied by Grammy nominated Vijay Iyer on piano, the soulful Dave Binney on saxophone, and the highly versatile Michael Sarin on drums.Johannes Weidenmueller provided a velvety backdrop to the flowing sounds on bass. The artists were hosted by Musical Bridges Around the World, a non-profit dedicated to enhancing San Antonio’s cultural landscape through scintillating musical performances from around the world. I had an opportunity to speak with Abassi and Iyer about their music.

Both musicians draw inspirations from traditional Pakistani and Indian music, and apply them to jazz; their parents were part of the first large wave of South Asian immigrants to arrive in the U.S. Abassi regularly uses these influences from the subcontinent to stretch the expression of his guitar playing to produce sitar-like sounds, and is known for employing what he calls “emotional listening” to get into the spirit of the music. He also collaborates with his wife on arranging her poetic ghazalsby applying jazz’s harmonic structures to this otherwise melody- and rhythmic-centered South Asian musical form.

“While there is a lot of science in terms of technique and theory to my jazz music, it should ultimately move you and be emotionally potent, and that can only come from an organic process,” said Abassi.
Read more: http://sacurrent.com/music/rez-abassi-and-vijay-iyer-transform-jazz-1.1415523

Vijay Iyer: Henry Threadgill Gets A Fascinating Makeover

Photo: Lynne HartyVijay Iyer and his trio masterfully articulate a complex composition's exuberant, zigzagging melody.

by JOHN MURPH

Trying to scale down the music of Henry Threadgill's early-'90s Very Very Circus ensemble in a piano-trio format is like trying to realize Star Wars as a stage monologue. The Very Very Circus not only performed fascinating, widescreen music — brimming with polyrhythmic propulsion, tonal oddities and barbed melodies — but its instrumentation also showcased an eccentric lineup which found room for two electric guitars, a tuba, French horn, violins and assorted percussion.

Nevertheless, Vijay Iyer does the nearly impossible with his captivating makeover of Threadgill's "Little Pocket Size Demons." Against Marcus Gilmore's serrated drum patterns and Stephan Crump's shrill arco bass melodies and thrusting bass lines, Iyer masterfully articulates the composition's exuberant, zigzagging melody. The collective improvisation grows more vigorous, yet the rhythm section allocates enough space for Iyer to leap forward with a capricious solo, marked by rumbling turnaround passages, jolting harmonies and jabbing interjections.

At the height of all the jittery activity, the trio captures much of the choreographed chaos that gave the Very Very Circus' work such a super-charged cinematic feel.

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/21/147061096/vijay-iyer-henry-threadgill-gets-a-fascinating-makeover?ft=3&f=4703895&sc=nl&cc=sod-20120221

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

5 Expansive Wadada Leo Smith Recordings, Picked By Vijay Iyer

by Vijay Iyer

This Saturday, Nov. 20, Wadada Leo Smith brings his Golden Quartet to the Library of Congress' Whittall Pavilion in Washington, D.C. We asked bandmate and pianist Vijay Iyer, whose recent Solo album is very much worth your time, to list his favorite Smith recordings, which span more than 30 years. — Ed.

Photo: Scott Groller

It's a great honor to present a handful of tracks by my hero and friend, the composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.

I first heard about Smith in the early 1990s, when I was starting to learn about the artists of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.  I'd read an interview with Anthony Braxton in which he spoke of Smith in the most superlative terms imaginable. Because of this, I got my hands on a classic album by saxophonist Frank Lowe, The Flam (1975), featuring one Leo Smith. I put it on, eager to hear this genius of the trumpet.

I was expecting some flashy post-Freddie Hubbard stylings, maybe — but instead I heard great silences, toneless columns of air, long tones that cut diagonally across the hubbub of the ensemble. I felt the same way I'd felt when I'd first heard Thelonious Monk eight years earlier: All I could do was ask, "Is this legal? Is this even music? Does he know something that no one else knows?"

The answer is yes. And it's a good feeling when music can lead you to the brink of your own understanding and still sound beautiful, true and ripe with significance.

Complete on  >> http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2010/11/16/131366498/5-expansive-wadada-leo-smith-recordings-picked-by-vijay-iyer

Vijay Iyer Blends The Old With The New

by Tom Moon

The jazz pianist Vijay Iyer had a breakout year in 2009. His trio album Historicity topped many year-end best-of lists, including those of critics whose tastes range far from jazz, and he was hailed by the Jazz Journalists' Association as Musician of the Year. The attention has created high expectations for the 38-year-old pianist's latest work, which is titled Solo.

Iyer has just been anointed as a next bright hope of jazz, and what does he do? He begins his first-ever solo piano collection with a calm, sometimes almost New Age-y reinvention of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature." Photo: Hans Speekenbrink

Naturally, the Thriller hit undergoes some changes along the way. This accessible little bonbon/journey — which some purists would dismiss as a "crossover" move — offers a peek into the mind of Iyer. Like many of his peers, the pianist and composer grew up listening to all kinds of music. He encountered jazz as a teenager in the not exactly golden age of the 1980s, when its practitioners were busy either upholding tradition or smashing it to inaudible smithereens. Since moving to New York in 1998, he's sought his own path: His small-group albums are distinguished by appealingly jagged melodies and surging polyrhythms. He's ported those traits over to the solo setting.

Complete on  >>  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130330825&ft=1&f=10002

vijay iyer trio live: "questions of agency"

vijay iyer, piano;
stephan crump, bass;
marcus gilmore (barely visible), drums.
recorded 19 january 2007 at the stone, nyc. videographer: nicolas letman-burtinovic