THE VIJAY IYER TRIO Feat. Harish Raghavan and Jeremy Dutton
The virtuoso & influential pianist Vijai Iyer, a three-time Grammy Award nominee, has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music.
He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; has composed for orchestras, soloists and chamber music ensembles and has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers & musicians from around the world.
His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage that range from Duke Ellington & Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane & Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the ‘60s & ‘70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa.
But Iyer’s artistry finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.”
Iyer’s ever-evolving trio conception, developed over the last 30 years alongside an enviable list of top notch bassists & drummers, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle, Andrew Hill’s Smokestack, McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles, the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, Fela Kuti, and The Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms, and the expressive nuance of chamber music.
The results, over the span of his trio’s five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, have not only defied the old categories, but inaugurated entirely new ones.
“It moves with unity and hits with a precise, joyous intensity.” – Boston Globe
“It’s as if this band wants to both seduce you and discomfit you, stripping you of everything but the ability to think and see for yourself.” – The New York Times
…a triumph of small-group interchange and fertile invention. Iyer’s piano work, whether arrestingly skittish or clothed in powerful solemnity, resounds with a visceral intensity of purpose, and his resourceful compatriots respond in kind. – The New Yorker
“a set of modern piano jazz that covers a remarkable range and features three brilliant musical imaginations that play well together…it is dazzling – seeming to give the listener every chance to really understand it…” – Popmatters
“As improvisers, they’ve got a few things in common: the ability to play with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity, in the style of well-schooled jazz musicians, while stoking a kind of writhing internal tension. Crucial to that balance is their ability to connect with each other in real time, almost telepathically.” – New York Times
“Mr. Iyer is a singular thinker about music” – Wall Street Journal
“…could be the definitive political work of this year…It evokes the highest ideals of creative music: not just taking turns but using one’s own to spur another’s.” – JazzTimes