“By now, there can be no doubt that pianist-composer Iyer stands among the most daringly original jazz artists of [his] generation,” wrote Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune. The American-born son of Indian immigrants and a 2011 Grammy nominee, VIJAY IYER (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) was described by The Village Voice as “the most commanding pianist and composer to emerge in recent years,” by The New Yorker as one of “today's most important pianists... extravagantly gifted,” by Pitchfork as “one of the most interesting and vital young pianists in jazz today,” and by the L.A. Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star.”
Over the course of the past few years, Vijay Iyer has made a significant impact on the landscape of contemporary jazz and has earned an astonishing number of awards and plaudits. In early May 2013 he received the prestigious Echo Award (the “German Grammy”) as International Pianist of the Year and he was most recently named Pianist of the Year in the 2013 Jazz Awards by the Jazz Journalists Association; a title he holds for the second consecutive year. (This is far from his first such accolade; in the 2010 Jazz Awards, the JJA voted Iyer Musician of the Year, an honor previously given to Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter and now Iyer’s long-time colleague and mentor, Wadada Leo Smith.) By the end of 2012, Iyer had been awarded top honors in the JazzTimes Critics Poll as Artist of the Year, Pianist of the Year and Composer of the Year, with the Vijay Iyer Trio placing first as Best Acoustic/ Mainstream Group of the Year. In an unprecedented series of wins, Iyer received top honors in five categories of the 2012 DownBeat International Critics Poll, including Jazz Artist of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year (for Accelerando), Jazz Group of the Year (for the Vijay Iyer Trio), Pianist of the Year and Rising Star Composer. No other artist in the 60-year history of the magazine’s poll has ever taken five titles simultaneously. Earlier in 2012, Iyer won two major arts prizes: the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and the Greenfield Prize.
Neither an aberration nor the playing out of a trend, this latest tide of honors is a direct result of Iyer’s remarkable 17-year track record as an artist. His 16 recordings have covered so much ground at such a high level of acclaim that it is easy to forget that they all belong to the same person. In March 2012, he released Accelerando, an intense and visceral album of original music and reimagined covers, featuring the Vijay Iyer Trio (Iyer, piano; Marcus Gilmore, drums; Stephan Crump, bass). Accelerando reached #1 on CMJ Radio, was named DownBeat’s #1 jazz album of the year, and earned the trio the title #1 jazz group of the year. It was voted #1 Jazz
Music + Art Management; 9 W. Walnut St., Asheville, NC 28801 828-225-5658 Album of the Year in Rhapsody’s annual poll of 119 critics (formerly hosted by the Village Voice), #1 Jazz Album of the Year in JazzTimes magazine’s critic’s poll and it topped ‘Best of Year’ lists in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, PopMatters.com, and DownBeat. Pitchfork described the album as "...[Iyer's] hardest-hitting trio album yet," DownBeat called it "terrific" and "ingenious," and All Music Guide described it as “a triumph in creativity and expert musicianship.” PopMatters.com called Accelerando “the best jazz record in recent memory.” New York Magazine quite earnestly referred to Accelerando as "one of the best instrumental hip-hop albums ever made."
Accelerando is a follow-up to the Trio's Grammy-nominated previous release, Historicity (2009), also a set of originals and surprising covers in his signature style, which became one of the last decade’s landmark jazz albums. Historicity received an astonishing level of acclaim, also named the #1 jazz album of the year by the DownBeat International Critics Poll, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Metro Times, National Public Radio, PopMatters.com, and the Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll. It, too, reached #1 on the CMJ jazz radio charts. The Vijay Iyer Trio went on to win the 2010 Echo Jazz Award for best international ensemble and the 2010 DownBeat Critics Poll for rising star jazz group. “Presto! Here is the great new jazz piano trio.” (New York Times) “Truly astonishing... they make challenging music sound immediately enjoyable.” (National Public Radio) “A jewel...9 out of 10” (PopMatters.com).
Between these two landmark trio albums, Iyer released two very different discs. In August 2010, Iyer released Solo, a kaleidoscopic piano album, which earned him solo concert engagements around the world and an extensive interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. The disc was praised as “bursting with both emotion and intelligence… a dispatch from the vibrant forefront of jazz.” (Utne Reader). This was followed in March 2011 by Tirtha, a trio collaboration with guitarist Prasanna and tabla player Nitin Mitta: “a jazz-informed reflection on the contemporary South Asian diaspora, with three perspectives in creative convergence… a wakeful, radiant performance.” (New York Times) "Tirtha is a triumph; it is a high-water mark in the constantly evolving discussion between jazz and Indian music.” (All Music Guide)
Over the previous ten years, Iyer's celebrated quartet featuring award-winning saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa mined “the magical and murky, imagined interzone, where the music of the Indo-Asian Diaspora meets the Western Jazz tradition... establishing the next extension in both traditions” (All Music Guide). They documented “some of the freshest, most compelling jazz today” (NPR) on four landmark discs, Panoptic Modes (2001), Blood Sutra (2003), Reimagining (2005), and Tragicomic (2008); each garnering worldwide praise.
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Alongside these works sit several vastly different, groundbreaking collaborations. Among the best-known are Holding it Down (2012), In What Language? (2004), and Still Life with Commentator (2007), three politically searing, stylistically omnivorous large-scale works created by Iyer with poet-performer Mike Ladd (“unfailingly imaginative and significant” - JazzTimes; “powerful narrative invention and ravishing trance-jazz... an eloquent tribute to the stubborn, regenerative powers of the human spirit” - Rolling Stone). On another end of the spectrum, Your Life Flashes (2002), Simulated Progress (2005), and Door (2008) capture the innovations of the experimental collective Fieldwork (“phenomenal... incredible, challenging, and forward-thinking” - All Music Guide). Raw Materials (2006, “a total triumph from beginning to end” - All About Jazz) documents “one of the great partnerships in jazz” (Chicago Tribune) - the piano-saxophone duo of Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa. All of Iyer’s albums have appeared on best-of-the-year lists in dozens of major media, ranging from JazzTimes, Jazzwise, Jazzman, DownBeat, and The Wire, to ArtForum, National Public Radio, The Utne Reader, The New Yorker, and The Village Voice.
Iyer's accomplishments extend well beyond his recordings. His quintet suite Far From Over, commissioned by the 2008 Chicago Jazz Festival and debuted before an audience of 30,000, was praised in the Chicago Tribune as “making music history... a potential masterpiece... searing, original, and dramatically charged... a shattering, epic composition.” His orchestral work Interventions was commissioned and premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in March 2007 under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. It was praised by The New York Times as “all spiky and sonorous,” and by the Philadelphia City Paper for its “heft and dramatic vision and a daring sense of soundscape.” Other works include RADHE RADHE: Rites of Holi (2013) commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts for International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), in collaboration with filmmaker Prashant Bhargava; Playlist for an Extreme Occasion (2012) commissioned by Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble; Rimpa Ephemera (2012) commissioned by Japan Society for Bang on a Can Allstars; Dig the Say (2012) commissioned by Bach Festival Society of Winterpark in Winterpark, FL for Brooklyn Rider; Mozart Effects (2011), a "freewheeling, raucously joyful response" (Boston Globe) to a brief Mozart fragment, commissioned by Brentano String Quartet; Mutations I-X (2005) commissioned and premiered by the string quartet ETHEL; Three Episodes for Wind Quintet (1999) written for Imani Winds; a “ravishing” (Variety) score for the original theater/dance work Betrothed (2007); the prize- winning film score for Teza (2008) by legendary filmmaker Haile Gerima; a suite of acoustic jazz cues for the sports channel ESPN (2009); the award-winning audiovisual installation Release (2010) in collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison; and the suite UnEasy (2011) in
Music + Art Management; 9 W. Walnut St., Asheville, NC 28801 828-225-5658 collaboration with choreographer Karole Armitage. His compositions have also been commissioned and performed by JACK Quartet, Hermès Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Imani Winds. An accomplished electronic musician and producer, Iyer has remixed tracks for British Asian electronica pioneer Talvin Singh, Islamic punk band The Kominas, and composer-performer Meredith Monk, and has collaborated with Das Racist, Dead Prez, Imani Uzuri, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium.
Across this diverse output, Iyer's artistic vision remains unmistakable. His powerful, cutting-edge music is firmly grounded in groove and pulse, but also rhythmically intricate and highly interactive; fluidly improvisational, yet uncannily orchestrated; emotionally compelling, as well as innovative in texture, style, and musical form. Its many points of reference include jazz piano titans such as Monk, Ellington, Tyner, Alice Coltrane, Andrew Hill, and Randy Weston; the classical sonorities of composers such as Reich, Ligeti, Messiaen, and Bartok; the low-end sonics of rock, soul, funk, hip-hop, dub, and electronica; the intricate polyphonies of African drumming; and the vital, hypnotic music of Iyer's Indian heritage.
Iyer has been featured in substantial interviews on NPR’s “Fresh Air” and “All Things Considered,” PRI’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” The Wall Street Journal, Die Welt, and The Times of India. A perennial critical favorite, Iyer won the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards for 2010 Musician of the Year and 2004 Up & Coming Musician of the Year. He has repeatedly won multiple categories of DownBeat’s International Critics' Poll, including Rising Star Jazz Artist (2006, 2007), Rising Star Composer (2006, 2007), Rising Star Pianist (2009), Rising Star Jazz Group (2010), Album of the Year (2010, 2012), Jazz Group of the Year (2012), Pianist of the Year (2012), Jazz Artist of the Year (2012). He has appeared on the covers of several international music magazines: JazzTimes (US), DownBeat (US), Jazzwise (UK), JazzThetik and JazzPodium (Germany), Concerto (Austria), and Jazz’n’More (Switzerland). He was recently chosen by GQ India as one of 50 Most Influential Global Indians. His many other honors include the prestigious 2003 CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2006 Fellowship in Music Composition from New York Foundation for the Arts, and most recently the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and the 2012 Greenfield Prize. As a composer/performer, Iyer has received commissioning grants from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, Meet The Composer, and Jazz Institute of Chicago. Iyer is currently engaged in a multi-year residency with San Francisco Performances, performing and working with arts and community groups.
Music + Art Management; 9 W. Walnut St., Asheville, NC 28801 828-225-5658 Iyer has joined forces with a wide range of contemporary artists, including creative music legends Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris, Amina Claudine Myers, and Henry Threadgill; his generation’s fellow forward-thinkers Craig Taborn, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Rez Abbasi, Ambrose Akinmusire, Liberty Ellman, Steve Lehman, and Tyshawn Sorey; hip-hop artists Das Racist, Dead Prez, DJ Spooky and High Priest of Antipop Consortium; tablaist/producers Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale; poets Amiri Baraka, Mike Ladd, Charles Simic and Robert Pinsky; filmmakers Bill Morrison, Haile Gerima and Prashant Bhargava; and choreographer Karole Armitage.
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 the cognitive science of music 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. His has published in Journal of Consciousness Studies, The Wire, Music Perception, JazzTimes, Journal for the Society of American Music, Critical Studies in Improvisation, in the anthologies Arcana IV (Hips Road), Sound Unbound (MIT Press), Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press), The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010 (Princeton University Press), Current Musicology, The Guardian and in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies. A faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, New York University, and The New School, he has also given master classes and lectures in music, cognitive science, jazz studies, and performance studies at California Institute of the Arts, Columbia University, Harvard University, Berklee School of Music, University of California campuses, and the School for Improvisational Music, among others. He is the Director of the Banff Centre's International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, an annual 3-week program in Alberta, Canada founded in 1974 by Oscar Peterson.
Vijay Iyer is a Steinway artist and uses Ableton Live software. http://vijay-iyer.com http://twitter.com/vijayiyer http://facebook.com/vijayiyermusic
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