Vijay Iyer profile picture

Vijay Iyer

it's the july issue

About Me

Named the 1 Rising Star Jazz Artist of the Year and 1 Rising Star Composer of the Year in the Downbeat Magazine International Critics’ Poll for both 2006 and 2007 , VIJAY IYER [pronounced "VID-jay EYE-yur"] was described in The Village Voice as "the most commanding pianist and composer to emerge in recent years." The son of Indian immigrants, he is a largely self-taught creative musician grounded in the American jazz lexicon and drawing from a wide range of Western and non-Western traditions. A young musician with a large, diverse, and respected body of work, Vijay is widely regarded as one of "the new stars of jazz" ( U.S. News & World Report ) and one of "today’s most important pianists" ( The New Yorker ). Forthcoming in spring 2008 are two new discs - Tragicomic under Vijay’s name, and Door , the third album by the collective trio Fieldwork . Previously, Vijay has released ten highly acclaimed recordings as a leader or co-leader, including Memorophilia (1995), Architextures (1998), Panoptic Modes (2001), Blood Sutra (2003) and Reimagining (2005) under his own name; Your Life Flashes (2002) and Simulated Progress (2005) with Fieldwork; Raw Materials (2006) in duo with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa; and In What Language? (2004) and Still Life with Commentator (2007), his large-scale works in collaboration with poet-performer Mike Ladd. Iyer has toured worldwide with his ensembles and collaborations, including the Vijay Iyer Trio / Quartet ("a formidable force... startlingly effective and unflinchingly forward-looking... one of the great rhythm units of the day" - Chicago Tribune ); his multidisciplinary projects with Mike Ladd ("unfailingly imaginative and significant" - JazzTimes ); Fieldwork ("a jazz power trio for the new century" - NPR’s Fresh Air ); and Raw Materials with Rudresh Mahanthappa ("a total triumph from beginning to end" - All About Jazz ). His recent engagements as a composer-performer include the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; the Asia Society, Merkin Hall, Zankel Hall, and Alice Tully Hall in New York City; the Bang on a Can Marathon; the Painted Bride Art Center and the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia; the TBA Festival at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art; the Smithsonian Institution and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; the New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles; Memorial Hall at UNC Chapel Hill; Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University; the Wexner Center at Ohio State University; The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the McCarter Theater at Princeton University; the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit; Cal Performances at U.C. Berkeley; and international music festivals in Paris, London, New York, The Hague, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Toronto, Ottawa, Cheltenham, Ljubljana, Nijmegen, Ulrichsburg, Molde, Victoriaville, Guelph, Atlanta, Newport, Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg, Perth, Melbourne, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Rochester, Verona, and Mumbai. As a composer/performer, Iyer has received commissioning grants from Meet The Composer, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, and Creative Capital Foundation. He received the prestigious 2003 CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts , is a 2006 Fellowship recipient from New York Foundation for the Arts , and was voted 2004 Up & Coming Musician of the Year in the Eighth Annual Jazz Awards . Iyer’s first orchestral work, Interventions , was commissioned and premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in March 2007 under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies for the ensemble’s 30th anniversary gala concerts. It was praised by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times as "all spiky and sonorous," and David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the piece "immediately proclaimed its importance." Peter Burwasser wrote in the Philadelphia City Paper , "[Iyer] brings it off with a heft and dramatic vision and a daring sense of soundscape." Other concert works include Mutations I-X (2005) commissioned and premiered by the string quartet Ethel, and Three Episodes for Wind Quintet (1999) written for Imani Winds. He also created the music for Betrothed (2007), an original theater/dance work by director Rachel Dickstein from stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, Anton Chekhov, and S. Ansky; Variety praised "the ravishing live accompaniment of Iyer’s sophisticated, raga- and jazz-influenced score" and The New Yorker wrote that "Vijay Iyer’s liquid music shimmers throughout." Vijay also co-created the score for the esteemed Ethiopian-American filmmaker Haile Gerima’s forthcoming feature, Teza . Iyer has collaborated in performance and on disc with a wide range of contemporary artists, including Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Amiri Baraka, Wadada Leo Smith, Dead Prez, Amina Claudine Myers, Butch Morris, George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Trichy Sankaran, Samir Chatterjee, Pamela Z, Imani Uzuri, Will Power, Suphala, Dafnis Prieto, Burnt Sugar, Karsh Kale, Ibrahim Quraishi, DJ Spooky, and many others. A polymath whose work has spanned the sciences, arts, and humanities, Iyer holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Yale College, and a Masters in Physics and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts from the University of California at Berkeley. He was chosen as one of nine "Revolutionary Minds" in the science magazine Seed , and his research in music cognition has been featured on the radio programs This Week in Science and Studio 360 . He has given master classes and lectures in composition, improvisation, cognitive science, jazz studies, and performance studies at New York University, The New School University, California Institute of the Arts, Columbia University, Harvard University, Manhattan School of Music, and the School for Improvisational Music, among others. His writings appear in Music Perception , Current Musicology , Journal of Consciousness Studies , Critical Studies in Improvisation , and the edited anthologies Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia Univ. Press) and Sound Unbound (MIT Press).Vijay is a Steinway artist. Management: Steve Cohen/Music and Art Management, Inc.Still Life with Commentator is out now on CD. Downbeat Magazine gives it FOUR STARS!
From the Savoy press release: //The songs of Still Life with Commentator consider our addiction to the opiate of personal testimony: live newscasts, blogs, reality TV. Addressing our participatory role as eager spectators, Ladd’s lyrics decode our post-9/11 culture of surveillance and spin, forming an ironic counterpoint to Iyer’s cycling rhythms and poignant harmonies.
Ladd says of his lyrics, "My intention was not to condemn the media or vilify it, but to try and better understand something so massive and all-encompassing by treating it as an environmental phenomenon, much like the weather -- i.e. sunny in one place and absolutely tempestuous and devastating in another. I hope that Still Life functions as a type of respiratory device for this new atmosphere."//
    "As grandiose in scope as ’In What Language?’... At times beautiful or bewildering, but entirely bewitching, it offers nuanced insights with each listen." --John Murph, Downbeat "elegiac and sardonic... a swirl of ominous textures and hypnotic rhythms... it draws you in." -- Nate Chinen, The New York Times "...these Iyer-Ladd creations are unfailingly imaginative and significant... Still Life is awash in ’post-human’ beatmaking but often pulses with lyricism... By refusing categorization in an overly rigid jazz field, these musicians further jazz’s purpose by ingraining its sensibility among different publics -- one important way for the music to operate in the 21st century." -- David Adler, JazzTimes
Get yours now at Amazon or iTunes . D O ! N O T ! P O S T ! A D S ! I N ! T H E ! C O M M E N T ! S E C T I O N ! ! ! !

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 9/16/2005
Band Website: vijay-iyer.com
Band Members: IF PLAYER DOESN'T WORK, CLICK "OPEN PLAYER IN A NEW WINDOW" --- Vijay Iyer Quartet : V.I., piano & composition; Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto saxophone; Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums. ["Machine Days" and "Threnody" are from the new album "Tragicomic" (Sunnyside 2008).] vijay iyer trio: vijay iyer, stephan crump, marcus gilmore. ["comin' up" and "becoming" are from the new album "tragicomic." below videos taped live at the stone , 19 jan 2007 by Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic.]
Raw Materials : V.I., piano & composition; Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto saxophone & composition. See the duo's myspace page for music samples. Fieldwork : V.I., piano & composition; Steve Lehman, saxophones & composition; Tyshawn Sorey, drums & composition. See Fieldwork's myspace page for music samples. [Below video of Fieldwork playing Tyshawn Sorey's composition "Of," filmed live on June 19, 2007 by Joe Chondo.]

Tirtha : V. I., piano, compositions; Prasanna , electric guitar, vocals, compositions; Nitin Mitta , tablas. [Below video is the group Tirtha performing the composition "Tribal Wisdom" by Prasanna, at The Jazz Standard on Nov 6, 2007, filmed by Sandi Higgins.]

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[Below video is the group Tirtha performing the composition "Tirtha" by Vijay Iyer, at The Jazz Standard on Nov 6, 2007, filmed by Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic.]

Still Life with Commentator : V.I., composer, programming, live electronics, piano; Mike Ladd, lyrics, voice (lead on "Cleaning Up the Mess"), electronics; Pamela Z, voice & live electronic processing (2nd lead on "Cleaning Up the Mess"); Guillermo E. Brown, voice, auxiliary electronic percussion; Okkyung Lee, cello; Liberty Ellman, guitar; Palina Jonsdottir, voice; Masa Nakanishi, voice; Scotty Hard, sound & co-production. Original theatrical performance conceived and directed by Ibrahim Quraishi. ["Cleaning Up the Mess" is from the album Still Life with Commentator by Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd, on Savoy Jazz.

Influences: Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, 80's Prince, John Coltrane, Mike Ladd, Alice Coltrane, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Outkast, Ali Farka Toure, Abida Perveen, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Duke Ellington, Bela Bartok, Anti-Pop Consortium, Alfred Schnittke, Gyorgy Ligeti, Nina Simone, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Mary Lou Williams, Cecil Taylor, Autechre, Cornershop, Asian Dub Foundation, Ornette Coleman, Trichy Sankaran, Sudha Raghunathan, Randy Weston, Andrew Hill, X-Ecutioners, Led Zeppelin, Jorge Luis Borges, A Tribe Called Quest, The Police, Henry Threadgill, De La Soul, Art Tatum, Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, Martin Scorsese, Bud Powell, Samuel R. Delany, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, people, air, water, food, music

Sounds Like: "big grey tire" (just sound it out)

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Discography

Tragicomic (2008)
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Sunnyside presents Vijay's long-awaited new quartet disc, his first since 2005's stunningly acclaimed "Reimagining." Featuring the same longstanding ensemble (Iyer, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore), the album includes ten Iyer originals and two astonishing covers: a rhythmically charged dub version of Bud Powell's "Comin' Up" and a solo rendition of the standard "I'm All Smiles."

"**** (4 stars out of 4) ...a near-certainty to be acclaimed as one of the best jazz discs of the year... starkly beautiful and powerful... one of the most powerful quartets in all of emergent jazz." - Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
"a strikingly original pianistic voice... 'Tragicomic' is another stellar installment in his oeuvre... a marriage of intellect and power, of brains and brawn... This is highfalutin jazz, and it swings madly." - Steve Greenlee, JazzTimes
"[P]ianist Vijay Iyer is on his way to becoming one of the major jazz voices of his generation... 'Tragicomic' is the most openhearted of Iyer's instrumental albums and, perhaps not coincidentally, the most unabashedly emotional." - Charles Farrell, emusic.com "Iyer brings a visionary sensibility to his projects, always capturing the prevailing zeitgeist... A stunning achievement, 'Tragicomic' is one of the year's best albums." - Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com

Door (2008)
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Praised on NPR's Fresh Air as "a jazz power trio for the new century," FIELDWORK makes its most powerful and fiercely imagined statement to date with Door, their third album for Pi Recordings . An important marker in this New York collective's ongoing evolution, Door documents three years of intense collaboration since Simulated Progress (2005), and is their first Fieldwork recording to feature the jaw-dropping contributions of Tyshawn Sorey, drummer/composer/co-leader of Fieldwork since 2005. Rounded out by saxophonist/composer Steve Lehman and pianist/composer Vijay Iyer, Fieldwork reflects and refracts the American jazz tradition, modern composition, African and South Asian musics, underground hip-hop and electronica, and the influential music of Chicago's A.A.C.M. The resulting blend is "rich in paradox: dark yet uplifting, intellectually demanding yet effortlessly funky" (JazzTimes).

"There's a profound sense of trust, shared values, and -- above all -- the art of communication... A phenomenal concept brought fully to fruition by these incredible, challenging, forward-thinking musicians." - Michael Nastos, All Music Guide

"staggeringly good" - Charles Farrell, emusic.com

Still Life with Commentator (2007)
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Savoy Jazz presents the album version of the critically acclaimed oratorio about tv news, the blogosphere, and life during wartime, by composer-pianist Vijay Iyer and poet-performer Mike Ladd. Also featuring Pamela Z, Guillermo E. Brown, Liberty Ellman, Okkyung Lee, Palina Jonsdottir, and Masayasu Nakanishi. Co-produced by Scotty Hard. Original theatrical production conceived and directed by Ibrahim Quraishi.

BEST ALBUMS OF 2006 - John Schaefer, WNYC**** (FOUR STARS) - Peter Margasak, Downbeat Magazine "At times beautiful or bewildering, but entirely bewitching, it offers nuanced insights with each listen." - John Murph, Downbeat Magazine "...these Iyer-Ladd creations are unfailingly imaginative and significant... Still Life is awash in "post-human" beatmaking but often pulses with lyricism. Ladd's delivery is throaty, peculiar in the best sense, a hip-hop vernacular with highbrow dimension. Iyer's deserved acclaim as a jazz composer and pianist also makes him noteworthy in a wider world of art... By refusing categorization in an overly rigid jazz field, these musicians further jazz's purposes by ingraining its sensibility among different publics -- one important way for the music to operate in the 21st century." - JazzTimes

"The libretto's tone often ricochets between elegiac and sardonic, with allusions ranging from Abu Ghraib to Dr. Phil. Much of the music is laptop-generated, a swirl of ominous textures and hypnotic rhythms... these elements commingle suggestively.
...the piece, with its uneasy resonances, holds up a fun-house mirror to our culture of information overload. And somehow the results are not just galling, but also often gripping. Like the subject of its critique, it draws you in." - The New York Times

"Once again keyboardist Vijay Iyer and vocalist Mike Ladd have collaborated brilliantly... The meaning of every segment of this work is transported with a musical richness that is absolutely perfect... Ladd and Iyer have humanized our world and remind us to believe in and practice what we know instinctually to be good." - All About Jazz

Raw Materials (2006)
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The long-awaited duo album on Savoy Jazz , created by the two longtime collaborators Vijay Iyer (piano, compositions) & Rudresh Mahanthappa (alto saxophone, compositions). Release date May 23, 2006.

BEST JAZZ ALBUMS OF 2006 - Village Voice, JazzTimes

**** (4 stars) "Although Raw Materials is the work of a duo, there's more detail here than you'll find from most combos double or triple its size. An auspicious debut." - Downbeat

" their most striking collaboration yet. A series of confident duets, the set combines stateliness with rawness... It's like seeing two sides of the same coin." - Time Out New York

"a fascinating look into a unique contemporary musical dialogue... [V]ery few recordings reveal such a richness or complexity of emotion -- and continue to reveal more of these qualities listen after listen." - All About Jazz

Reimagining (2005)
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Vijay Iyer's exhilarating debut on Savoy Jazz , featuring powerful new music for his longstanding quartet (Iyer, piano; Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto saxophone; Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums). Capped off with a radical solo piano version of John Lennon's "Imagine." Release date May 17, 2005.

BEST JAZZ ALBUMS OF 2005 - Slate, ArtForum, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, JazzTimes

**** (4 stars) - Downbeat

"an organic, austere consistency of vision and accomplishment that's simply stunning... The quartet achieves an internal sympathy and rapport that's unsurpassed by any working jazz group today." - All About Jazz

"Iyer plays with a ringing bell-like tone that recalls both McCoy Tyner and Nina Simone at her most wrought, then drops small descending chords like blessings... The music conveys a narrative quality that's very much driven by the leader that combines with a strong lyrical sense to create intensely engaging music." - Signal to Noise

"Here is a musician who is discovering as he goes, one who never gives in to notions of excess or mere vanguard speculation, but who moves purposefully into the process of discovery. And jazz is better for it. Reimagining is the sound of the mature Iyer, who is at once authoritative and inquisitive, finding and relating mystery as he uncovers it and, in the process, furthering the jazz tradition. Bravo." - All Music Guide

Simulated Progress (2005)
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The groundbreaking second album by the collective trio Fieldwork , featuring Vijay Iyer , Steve Lehman , and previous Fieldwork drummer Elliot Kavee. Release date: July 19, 2005.

"A JAZZ POWER TRIO FOR THE NEW CENTURY." - NPR's Fresh Air

"a dazzling, intrepid sort of new jazz that's as deeply interactive as anything you're likely to hear this year... an unwavering unity of sonic purpose and attack... there is nothing else out there that sounds like it... In its risk-taking, fragility, and fearlessness, it's also very thrilling." - All About Jazz

"dazzling dialogues that aim equally for listeners' feet and minds. Together, they create intensely rhythmic music that combines jazz ingenuity, rock velocity and World Music savvy. Their visceral compositions constantly blur the lines between improvised flights of fancy and expertly calibrated arrangements... The result is a heady, punchy outing that could serve as a template for daring, forward-looking musicians everywhere." - San Diego Union-Tribune

"Fieldwork is the sound of jazz exploding and raining down shards of glass upon our heads." - Prefix Magazine

Read the liner notes for
In What Language? In What Language? (2004)
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Vijay Iyer's genre-defying collaboration with poet/hip-hop artist Mike Ladd is a series of monologues by people of color negotiating the hyper-globalized setting of an international airport. Featuring an eleven-member ensemble of musicians and speaking voices, this is the album version of the acclaimed multi-media performance piece of the same name. Co-produced by Scotty Hard.

"A triumph of a genre that doesn't yet exist. The 80-minute 'song cycle' of human lives caught up in globalization's swirl is a model of what makes good art connect: It is aggressively ambitious yet unfailingly accessible and deeply empathetic. - S. Mitter, Boston Globe

"A song cycle of powerful narrative invention and ravishing trance-jazz, In What Language? is about nothing less than the death of trust. In the post-9/11 world, we are all suspects: probed, interrogated, x-rayed, doubted... Poet Mike Ladd vividly echoes that outrage and desperation in the raps and spoken-word reveries here, seventeen pointed fictions and candid reflections on exile, quarantine, suspicion and skin, performed by a moving corps of voices. Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer amplifies that tangle of anger, pain, and motion with a spinning-wheel score for jazz-rock septet: roiling outbreaks of fusion, lusty sighs of brass, jolts of electro hip-hop. There is a beautiful resilience here, too - in Iyer's cleansing cascades of piano and Ladd's declaration near the end of the album: 'I swallow whole every complexity and digest all the answers / And no answers will emerge, only music, food and family in the air." In What Language? is a compelling, provocative record about a world grown smaller, meaner and more fearful. It is also an eloquent tribute to the stubborn, regenerative powers of the human spirit." - David Fricke, Rolling Stone

"...it's that elusive thing, underground political music that sounds good... a breakthrough hip-hop-jazz fusion... it's one of the smartest I've heard, and one of the few that really works." - Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

"...a monumental work that seamlessly combines sound and voice for an artistic statement that should reverberate for years to come... simply a masterpiece" - Signal to Noise

****1/2 (4 1/2 stars, out of 5) - Downbeat

CHOC [highest rating] - Jazzman

1 ALBUM OF THE YEAR - Jazzwise

""The great success of 'In What Language?' can be measured by the seamlessness with which Ladd's verse meets Iyer's music. The strength of their collaborative efforts can hardly be overstated... The marriage of sound and word are so complete that it becomes impossible to imagine one component of the project without the other... a tour de force... Steeped in the language of South Asian and pan-African culture but trafficking in universal impulses..." - JazzTimes

Read the liner notes for
Blood Sutra Blood Sutra (2003)
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The Vijay Iyer Quartet's stunning follow-up to Panoptic Modes is released as a hybrid SACD, with a great stereo mix for your cd player, and hi-def stereo & 5.1 surround mixes for an SACD player. Released on the newly resurrected Artists House label.

The cohesive group's ethos is at once reflective and kinetic... This is exciting and eminently listenable stuff, intuitive in bearing and dynamic in execution. An essential for adventurous listeners, [it] could also serve as an ideal introduction to Iyer's burgeoning oeuvre. - JazzTimes

...raises Iyer's writing and playing to the next level... Blood Sutra finds him engaging in sharply diverse but well-balanced forms on each track - and coming up a winner every time... Not simply a great jazz record, Blood Sutra is a statement of purpose from an artist whose youth stands in contrast to his irrefutable skill. - Jazziz

"Blood Sutra is a terrifically challenging record. But challenging music is often the most rewarding, and this suite of 12 perfectly interlocking songs follows through on that promise... Iyer's compositions are moving jazz in a new direction." - The Colorado Springs Independent

Your Life Flashes (2002)
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A collaborative trio project called Fieldwork , featuring Iyer, saxophonist Aaron Stewart, and drummer Elliot Kavee

"a terrific disc, filled with vibrant playing and wondrous ideas" - The Boston Globe

"terse, spellbinding miniatures that never stand still" - The Village Voice

"Fieldwork is doing an excellent job of immersing itself in the music's most primal and essential elements...the exploration of rhythm in an intimate and intensely purposeful dialogue." - Billboard

Read the liner notes for Panoptic Modes Panoptic Modes (2001)
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high-energy quartet music featuring Rudresh Mahanthappa, Stephan Crump, and Derrek Phillips. This cd was chosen as one of the best jazz albums of 2001 in The New Yorker and The Village Voice.

"sends a ripple through the jazz universe" - modernjazz.com

"Iyer's spiky chords, precise phrasing, and surprising linear improvisations are consistently compelling... This band glows with purpose." - Gary Giddins, Village Voice

"FOUR STARS...a music so rhythmically gripping and harmonically provocative that one hardly can wait to hear what outlandish ideathese players will hit upon next... 'Panoptic Modes' offers a sensuousness of sound and vividness of performances thatwill seduce even the casual listener." - Howard Reich, Los Angeles Times

Read the liner notes for Architextures Architextures (1998)
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original music for trio, octet, & solo piano

"utterly remarkable... rhythmically challenging, smartly composed, and burns through with passionate playing and improvisation" - sonicnet.com (top 10 list for 2000)

"genius... epitomizing new jazz at its best." - San Francisco Bay Guardian

"bracingly expressionist jazz... full of pulsating blues" - New York Times

Read the liner notes for Memorophilia Memorophilia (1995)
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solo piano, trio, quartets, quintet; guests Steve Coleman, Francis Wong, & George Lewis

"vibrant with an Ellingtonian elegance... thoughtfully conceived and gorgeously executed." - The Montclarion

"one of the most outstanding examples of original contemporary jazz I can remember hearing in a long, long while... The music is not your typical straight-ahead jazz jam session. It is a work of art with orchestral balance and dignity." - Jazz Friends Review

"One of the best albums of 1996" - Cadence magazine editor Bob Rusch

"One of the 15 most interesting sounds of the decade!" - A. Magazine

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Record Label: Sunnyside Records, Pi Recordings, Savoy Jazz...
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

musical elitism

a funny t-shirt courtesy of the gmail linkbot... guess they thought it would fit me?
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Fri, 23 May 2008 11:49:00 PST

interview, Fieldwork concert, new website

Hey all, check out this new interview at innerviews.orgAlso, New Yorkers: don't miss Fieldwork's CD release concert for Door at Joe's Pub on Saturday, May 31 - ONE SET ONLY at 7:30pm.About Fieldwork's...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Thu, 22 May 2008 06:30:00 PST

news, info, links

Dear friends, This is pianist Vijay Iyer wishing you well. I’m writing to share some info about a few upcoming NYC-area events, plus some links and news of general interest:---This weekend I&rs...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:26:00 PST

transcript of Obama’s speech

May as well put this blog to use -- Transcript of Obama’s speechThe following is a transcript of Sen. Barack Obama’s speech, as provided by Obama’s campaign. We the people, in order ...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:14:00 PST

news & links

A few items ranging from greatly important to mildly interesting: ---My dear friend and associate Scott Harding (aka Scotty Hard), producer/engineer extraordinaire, was in a catastrophic car accident ...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:57:00 PST

a top ten list for everyone...

... is here at last.Seriously, we hit one or two with Still Life with Commentator and I am thankful. At the moment it seems that this disc may just never come out in Europe. So, dear people overseas...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:07:00 PST

jazztimes before & after, upcoming releases

Have a look at the new JazzTimes issue's Before and After that I did. You can play along by checking out the MP3s yourself!We've completed work on two new recordings: Tragicomic under my name, with m...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:52:00 PST

new songs, curating The Stone

A few things:1) I put a few new songs up from a new quartet/trio album that we just finished mixing... Hope you like them.2) Tirtha now has a MySpace page.3) In case you're coming through NYC in the ...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:29:00 PST

solo piano mixtape

Please have a look / listen when you have a chance - Destination Out presents Autoscopy: A solo piano mixtape compiled by Vijay IyerBest, Vijay...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Mon, 17 Sep 2007 06:21:00 PST

Max Roach

The great man has passed on...
Posted by Vijay Iyer on Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:37:00 PST