jazz.com :: IN CONVERSATION WITH VIJAY IYER

Pianist and composer Vijay Iyer is anything but predictable. Innovative and provocative, his music draws on an eclectic range of influences, including hiphop, West African drumming, South Indian classical music and, of course, jazz, assimilating and crafting these sounds into an indefinable yet readily identifiable style.
Full Article

Downbeat :: Experimental Attitudes

Jason Moran, Matthew Shipp and Vijay Iyer have each developed his own personal playing and composing styles, and have emerged as leading figures in the jazz scene. So, when we sat them down for a discussion, the result was a conversation as interesting, creative and intense as their music. Full Article

El Entruso :: Tragicomic

Vijay Iyer, en pocos años, se ha constituido en una de las figuras con mayor aptitud creativa del firmamento musical. La amplitud de sus intereses artísticos y culturales y la infalible materialización de los mismos nos obligan a utilizar más de un concepto para definir el alcance de su obra. Full Article

JAZZ COLOURS

Preview the jazz colours article on Vijay Iyer at jazz colours.com

Grit TV :: Meeting the unknown

Contemporary Jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer has a BA in math and physics from Yale and a Masters in physics from UC Berkely. But as he relates here, music came first. Iyer started playing the violin at age 3 and after a few detours came to his senses in his early twenties. In this wide-ranging interview Iyer discusses the politics of his music, the post 9/11 moment, and meeting the unknown. Watch video

courant :: Iyer Quartet Creates Jazz With Intricacy, Intellect And Emotion

Vijay Iyer's quartet filled the Yale Law School courtyard with scintillating sound for 90 minutes Tuesday evening. The jazz pianist focused his attention primarily on a series of original compositions from "Tragicomic," his new CD on Sunnyside Records. Full Article

Charlotte Examiner :: Fieldwork - Door (Pi, 2008)

Fieldwork is a cooperative band made up of a rotating cast of some of the best players in modern experimental jazz. This edition of the group includes Vijay Iyer on piano, Steve Lehman on alto saxophone and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and the trio produces dense, knotty improvisations that are complex but never overly stuffy or boring. The music retains its excitement despite being dark, ominous and complicated. There is a lot of mystery and pent up emotion in between the notes that keeps the music constantly engaging and interesting. Full Article

jazz.com :: VIJAY IYER: COMIN' UP

The composition may have been written by bebop titan Bud Powell, but don't let that fool you. Few pianists of the current day show less bebop influence in their playing than Vijay Iyer, and his version of "Comin' Up" sounds nothing like Powell's original. Instead of crisp comping chords, Iyer sends out waves of sound from the piano. Full Article

all about jazz :: Tragicomic

Pianist Vijay Iyer's poly-stylistic take on the jazz tradition has fostered collaborations with a wide spectrum of artists, including M-Base founder Steve Coleman, avant garde legend Roscoe Mitchell and experimental hip-hop conceptualist Mike Ladd. As a self taught musician with a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale and a Masters in Physics and Ph.D in Technology and the Arts from UC Berkley, Iyer brings a visionary sensibility to his projects, always capturing the prevailing zeitgeist. Full Article

All About Jazz :: Tragicomic & Door

Whether through theatrical productions, poetry collaborations or standard jazz settings, Vijay Iyer uses music to comment on various aspects of contemporary culture. A pianist and composer of boundless intelligence and creativity, his appearance on a pair of excellent new releases displays his versatility in quartet and trio settings. Full Article

all about jazz :: Tragicomic

Expressing everything that is possible at one point in time is how art comes about. For visual artists, the limitations of the chosen medium frame and freeze the passion of the art. For musicians, the parameters comply with a different set of conditions. Music is concerned with time and the kinds of changes that occur within it. How those changes affect the listener complete a never-ending cyclical relationship. Full Article

the jazz monster :: Vijay Iyer reimagines the jazz quartet

Alright, it's over. Robert Glasper and Jason Moran- both of whom brilliant young piano players- should know this already; Glasper's only released three albums as a leader, and Jason Moran hasn't come out with a new disc since early 2006's "Artist in Residence." In case there was ever any kind of question, this is Vijay Iyer's decade, much like the 90's belonged to Brad Mehldau. Full Article

Review of Tragicomic on All About Jazz

"Iyer brings a visionary sensibility to his projects, always capturing the prevailing zeitgeist... With an expansive mindset, he moves beyond his cerebral beginnings to embrace traditional harmonies and thematic development with a sweeping sense of bittersweet melody... A stunning achievement, Tragicomic is one of the year's best albums."

Review of Tragicomic on Pitchfork Media

"In the jazz world, it's a fight for every musician to carve out his or her own little instrumental niche, to find that thing as a musician that makes them distinct. Some never do, others constantly change in a search for their style, and still others are just born to sound like no one but themselves. It's not a stretch to put Vijay Iyer in that final category... a unique pianist who continues to show us what his instrument can do."

Review of Tragicomic on PopMatters

"Tragicomic isn't meant to simply reflect the state of our times; it is meant to help transform it... Tragicomic is a statement of transformation, of bittersweet existence in a world where information is easier to come by but harder to understand... Iyer's music is never regressive nor is it overly nostalgic. Rather, the music on Tragicomic bears a visionary intent."

Review of Tragicomic on Emusic

"...[P]ianist Vijay Iyer is on his way to becoming one of the major jazz voices of his generation... [H]e has fully consolidated his early influences (Steve Coleman with M-Base, pianist Andrew Hill, and various Indian musical forms) in order to come to a personal language that's immediately recognizable... Tragicomic is the most openhearted of Iyer's instrumental albums and, perhaps not coincidentally, the most unabashedly emotional."

WNUR Pick of the Week for Tragicomic, April 7, 2008

"In his debut with Sunnyside Records, pianist Vijay Iyer continues to conceive a style and sound deserving of recent high critical acclaim. Iyer, who has been recognized with top honors as a rising star according to Down Beat, demonstrates a unique and highly personal understanding of the jazz language that could only be hampered by overly simplistic categorization... [T]he quartet, also including saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, is intently focused throughout – the tightness displayed here is uncanny, and indicative of unquestionable dedication and effort. Iyer's latest release is triumphant in many facets."

Innerviews.com

The global jazz envoy on infusing instrumentals with social commentary

Acclaimed pianist, composer, and sonic conceptualist Vijay Iyer discusses how his two new releases, Tragicomic and Door, reflect the mercurial world around him. Iyer also provides a revealing glimpse into his creative process and his unquenchable thirst for fresh perspectives. Read Full Article

"Vijay Iyer Quartet concert at Albright-Knox to be major jazz event"

by Jeff Simon
The Buffalo News
"It won't be released for another month but when it is, Vijay Iyer's new Sunnyside disc "Tragicomic" is a near-certainty to be acclaimed as one of the best jazz discs of the year.

What is also a near-certainty is that the Iyer quartet concert that will doubtless preview some of the material in "Tragicomic" in the Albright- Knox Gallery at 3 p.m. Sunday will be one of the major events in this entire season of Albright-Knox Art of Jazz concerts.

Writes Iyer in the disc's notes to explain the title: "Cornel West decodes the blues aesthetic as a tragicomic sensibility stemming from a sustained encounter with arguably history's greatest, cruelest absurdity . . . A tragicomic outlook can ease our pains of metamorphosis and help us dream the next phase into being. That's how and why this music was made."

And what a quartet the Indian/ American pianist has making it - his frequent partner alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore, the grandson, no less, of the great Roy Haynes. And how starkly beautiful and powerful is the music on it.

It is dark, insistent music, reminiscent in its modal harmonies and haunted minimalism and angularity of the best music of the late pianist Mal Waldron. Unlike Waldron, though, who was mostly known for his records with Coltrane and as Billie Holiday's pianist, the 36-year-old Iyer has been an increasingly praised composer/pianist throughout his career. This, after all, is a Yale graduate with a masters in physics and an "interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts" from the University of California at Berkley. He represents, along with Brad Mehldau, another pianist his age, an almost entirely different kind of jazz pianist - formidably intellectual and not the slightest bit shy about it.

Nor is he politically shy in "Tragicomic." One tune is called "Macaca Please" after the semicoherent racial slur by former U.S. senator from Virginia George Allen.

And when he plays a standard like "I'm All Smiles" (the only one on "Tragicomic"), the mood is just as ebony and indigo as everything else.

Coming to Buffalo, then, on Sunday is one of the most powerful quartets in all of emergent jazz.

Guardian (UK) feature: "A Tornado in a Greenhouse"

by Kevin Le Gendre
The Guardian

Modes and Melodies of Resistance [Iyer/Ladd projects reviewed on Counterpunch.org]

by Ron Jacobs
Counterpunch
There are a couple of discs out there in the world of music that bear listening. Echoing a modern world where paranoia masquerades as security and the fetish for material things has become religious in nature, these discs satirize and reject this world we find ourselves in. Nothing is sacred here, yet everything has value. Whether it's a positive or negative worth is a matter of where one comes from. Like the music itself....

Vijay Iyer is the son of Indian immigrants raised in upstate New York. His works include the intriguing Memorophilia and the 2003 release Blood Sutra. Iyer expanded his jazz stylings in 2004 when he collaborated with hiphop artist Mike Ladd on the CD In What Language? This disc explores Iyer's world of dual nationality and jazz with beats and piano. The lyrics are intoned by Mike Ladd, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Alison Easter and Ajay Naidu. They tell stories of police harassment and air travel and are based on the experiences of the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi at JFK airport in the spring of 2001. While he was changing planes at JFK Panahi was shackled to a bench in a holding cell by INS agents and and ultimately sent back to his previous departure point Hong Kong. As Panahi told the story, he wrote, "I wanted to tell my fellow passengers, "I'm not a thief! I'm not a murderer! I'm just a ... filmmaker. But how to tell this? In what language?'" Hence the CD's title.

The liner notes make the point of this work clear. "The airport is not a neutral place....This album is a commentary on the non-neutrality of transit." For anyone who spends time in airports, they know this is true. There is a police presence always and there are divisions that are quite apparent if one only looks for them. Iyer and Ladd do this in a manner that transcends anything I could write here. Like any quality music, this disc becomes part of the listener's consciousness if one allows it to.

Iyer's second collaboration with Ladd, titled Still Life With Commentator, is a commentary on the world of information bombardment that we live in. At once replicating the cacophony of words and images we live within and without and a construct that shows how the packaging of that information makes us either at peace, fearful or frustrated, the album is frenetic at times and almost religious at others. Vijay's keyboard magic enhances the words and enlightens the message. Indeed, the vocal and instrumental interplay on the piece "Cleaning Up the Mess" on Still Life With Commentator is transcendent in the manner that the best religious music is transcendent. Think Beethoven's Missa Solemnis or the chants of the Gyuto Monks of Tibet. Those are moments when nothing comes between the listener and the spirit world. Yet here the lyrics are of a more temporal and earthly nature, if only because of their topic. Then there's the tune (well, it's not really a tune...it's more like banter) titled "Fox N Friends." This little spoof of the morning nonsense that passes for intelligent banter on the morning TV news shows is just plain funny. The words are irrelevant to the frenetic caffeine-laced cadence they maintain.

The tune "Infogee Rhapsody" opens the disc with a bass line that is also a heartbeat. Then the piano begins. Beyond Gil Scot Heron but taken from his seed, the lyrics wrench themselves from the dreamlike sounds of the music into your consciousness. Then it's into a rap that headlines noises taken from the video game of your choice. A religious hymn of the Catholic variety titled "Cleaning up the Mess" follows. Vijay is a cerebral pianist that my ear cannot help but compare to Keith Jarrett and even Thelonious Monk. The music of Iyer and his combo is stream-of-consciousness poetry without words implanting themselves secretly in your being like a bird's song heard first thing in the morning.

New York Times review of Raw Materials concert at JVC Jazz Festival: "Taking Composing Cues from the Number of Gods"

by Ben Ratliff
New York Times "Mr. Iyer worked through frantic tangles of chords, slowing down and speeding up by degrees, giving the music an undulating feeling. The piece started winding down to four repeated chords, and became prettier and clearer; it ended assuredly, with both musicians landing on the same note an octave apart... Most of these pieces come with little inside motors: Mr. Iyer often set an ostinato or a slowly rising pattern with his left hand and played tremolo or arpeggio patterns with his right...

"But 'Remembrance,' an elegiac ballad... was led by a slow and pretty melody, for which both musicians smeared their sound: Mr. Iyer used a sustain pedal, and Mr. Mahanthappa played webby, breathy saxophone notes.

"One of the challenges of a saxophone-piano duet is what to do about the lack of a drummer. Mr. Iyer and Mr. Mahanthappa have been playing together so much over the last 10 years, in different groups, that they find ways to fill the void with interweaving rhythmic accents; in their final piece of the night, fast and full of sliced-up patterns built on a steady groove, you could almost hear a phantom drummer. And it was a good one, young, learned and cool-headed."

Variety review of "Betrothed"

by Bob Verini
Variety
[C]onsistent invention and commitment mark Dickstein and team -- especially composer Vijay Iyer and lighting designer Nicole Pearce -- as talents to watch... [T]hesps shift with finesse among dialogue, Story Theater direct address and movement (both swift, gestural statements and longer dance set-pieces), all to the ravishing live accompaniment of Iyer's sophisticated, raga- and jazz-influenced score.

New Yorker blurb for "Betrothed"

The New Yorker
Dickstein's cast enacts each story with glowing fullness, and Vijay Iyer's liquid music shimmers throughout.

"Band, Battle" (Preview of Washington DC performance of Still Life with Commentator)

by Bob Massey
Washington Post Express
"SUDDENLY, WE WERE ALL JOURNALISTS," said Vijay Iyer, recalling the 2003 prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. "That whole thing exploded at the same time the blogosphere came of age, and fueled it."
The pianist and composer had recently created, with lyricist Mike Ladd, a stage show called "In What Language?" based on travel difficulties post-9/11 for people of color. And, he said, "We started to think about the role of the audience in modern warfare, basically."
As outrage over black hoods and dangling wires lit up the Web, Iyer and Ladd crafted their info overload into a multimedia stage show for the BAM Next Wave festival. "Still Life With Commentator" visits Washington - the fountainhead of angry bloggery - on Friday.
Once, Iyer noted, "there were picnics at the Battle of Gettysburg," Now, with the Internet, there's "this intense level of remove - not only from the events, but from the people around us. So it's a very emotional relationship we have with the news media and the blogosphere."
Fertile territory for Ladd's impressionistic post-hip-hop raps built from headlines, soundbites and poetic insights. "Mike writes these ironic landscape poems about the face of Dan Rather," said Iyer. Or "Edward L. Bernays Flies the Hindenberg," referring to the father of modern propaganda. Or "Jon Stewart on Crossfire," a bittersweet number that could teach Timbaland a few production tricks.
Ladd's wordplay reaches beyond hip-hop as far as Iyer's score pushes beyond jazz. "This is the most electronic project I've ever done," said Iyer, Downbeat magazine's 2006 composer of the year. From eerie to anthemic, Iyer calls on glitchy mechanical textures, electro beats, shimmering piano, cello and guitar. Ladd's gravelly raps blend into operatic vocals by avant-diva Pamela Z and monologues in Japanese.
The show, said Iyer, is not "a harangue. We want this to be a mutual celebration of where we're at, finding what's beautiful and what's broken about it. One of the last lines is 'Text me back, we are all in this together,' so I think it's pretty clear."

Review ofStill Life with Commentator cd

by Lyn Horton
All About Jazz
"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... Iyer has outdone himself in this extraordinary exposition. His versatility extends within the piece from playing the piano to sculpting highly ornamental yet structurally strong, formalized and rhythmic programming and sequencing. From the heartbeat-like pulse that introduces the dramatically edgy vocalization by Ladd to the dense diversified layering that expands and contracts throughout to the very last hint of explosive sound that closes the recording, this music transcends what any other contemporary classical composer could do... it is free and flexible and blends inextricably with the moments.
Ladd's poetry pierces with raw pungency. He lets very little escape attention or examination. That is the beauty, intelligence and attraction of his poetry. The poetry intertwines disparate references and correlates them within numerous metaphors. When combined with the music, the poetry unites with a tempo that renders it unforgettable and haunting... Iyer has taken Ladd's poetry into his being and transformed starkly political and razor-sharp criticism into a stunning reflection of our jagged cultural disconnections. Ladd and Iyer have humanized our world and remind us to believe in and practice what we know instinctually to be good."

Review of ACO concert

by Peter Burwasser
Philadelphia City Paper
"Vijay Iyer is probably best-known as a jazz pianist, and was the soloist for his first orchestral composition, "Interventions." Combining an improvised solo with a scored ensemble is a tricky proposition. It is hard to avoid a kind of culture clash. Iyer is ambitious, but he brings it off with a heft and dramatic vision and a daring sense of soundscape."

Review of ACO concert on Sequenza 21

by Galen Brown
Sequenza 21
"...none of the first three pieces excited me in the way that two sections of Vijay Iyer'sInterventions did. Perhaps a third of the way in, the orchestra drops out and Iyer, who was playing the largely improvised piano part, lets loose with a set of rippling riffs while pre-processed drum and hi-hat loops bounce back and forth in the speakers... The piece's long, static denouement was, for me, the heart of the piece. Most of the orchestra starts snapping their fingers in a steady slow rhythm, while the piano and strings give a long, droning, steady chord. It's funny at first - you expect them to break into 'boy, boy, crazy boy'- but as it continues the snaps reclaim their independence and provide an unusual sounding grid while the percussionist plays a slow pattern on a suspended cymbal. The cymbal pattern sounds regular, but out of sync with the snaps, but if it was truly regular I couldn't figure out the pattern. The overall effect was gorgeous and entrancing, and I didn't want it to stop."

Review of American Composers Orchestra Concert

by Anthony Tommasini
The New York Times
"The piece, which includes elements where the players choose at will among riffs and motifs from a 'gesture palette' chart, as the composer calls it, did sound good, all spiky and sonorous, in this performance."The New York Times

Review of American Composers Orchestra concert

by David Patrick Stearns
Philadelphia Inquirer
"The other piece that immediately proclaimed its importance wasInterventions, the first orchestral work of New York-based, world-music-influenced Vijay Iyer. There, you had tangible references to American jazz - imagine Thelonious Monk in an anti-gravity chamber - in an episodic series of sound worlds (musicians snap their fingers at one point) within a clear frame of electronic sound."

Feature article: "In search of jazz with 'maximum creative risk'"

by Siddhartha Mitter
The Boston Globe
'one of the most important jazz pianists of his generation... The "maximum creative risk" [that Vijay and his colleagues] are tackling is to make music that is not only brilliant, but relevant and democratic.'

Feature article: "Songs of India"

by Will Friedwald
New York Sun
A discussion of recent discs by Vijay, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and vocalist Sachal Vasandani. "[A]ll three young men are talents imminently worthy of our continued attention."

Downbeat Magazine feature article: "Fire Music Renaissance"

by John Murph
Downbeat Magazine
"new music offers a surge of political dissent"

Downbeat Magazine review ofStill Life with Commentator

by Peter Margasak
Down Beat Magazine
**** (FOUR STARS) "At a time when so many jazz musicians eschew the chance to use their work to comment on the volatile state of world affairs, particularly the American role in the current mess, pianist Vijay Iyer is making a habit of laying it on the line. His second collaboration with the hip-hop poet and MC Mike Ladd presents a dizzyingly dense look at our present Internet-obsessed information age, and how the news is no longer news but something like oxygen... There's plenty to digest here... a rich assemblage of electronic beats and textures and the organic melodic embroidery from Iyer, cellist Okkyung Lee and guitarist Liberty Ellman. The proceedings shift between hip-hop, art song and avant-garde soul... Ladd's lyrics are imagistic, juggling heady wordplay and the contemporary media theory mumbo jumbo that makes a virtual tomorrow seem equally horrific and comforting... It's an idea-crammed piece of which I'm still making sense a dozen listens later. It doesn't show its hand casually and it seems to revel in its ability to make the listener nervous. That's some high praise."

"GLOBAL JAZZ: Pianist Vijay Iyer's cutting-edge music draws on the Indian rhythms of his heritage with post-bop, hip-hop and more"

by Mark Stryker
Detroit Free Press
Iyer, 35, is best known for the organic way he draws on his South Indian heritage in his music. [He] has forged a cutting-edge aesthetic rooted in jazz but saturated with dense Indian and funk rhythms, incantatory improvisations and churning group interaction. Nothing in jazz sounds quite like Iyer's long-running quartet, which makes its Detroit debut Friday at the Max M. Fisher Music Center.
Iyer's originality, emblematic of a flood of globalism coursing through contemporary jazz, has made him one of the most talked about young pianists in jazz. Iyer swept both the rising star pianist and composer categories in the 2006 critics poll run by Down Beat, the bible of jazz magazines...
The Indian influence in Iyer's music is most apparent in the zigzag rhythms, the way intricately layered patterns lie across the beat... at its best, the heady mathematical concepts morph into such strong elliptical grooves that listeners find their heads bobbing involuntarily... There is also a surprise around every corner...
Still, it's reductive to see Iyer and Mahanthappa only through the prism of their shared heritage. Both have been equally informed by the experience of growing up brown in America as opposed to specifically Indian, and various strains of African-American music, from Prince to hip-hop to John Coltrane, are wired into their DNA.
"All of this stuff is part of who we are as Americans," says Iyer.

JazzTimes Review of Still Life with Commentator at BAM

by David Adler
JazzTimes
"...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."

New York Times review of Still Life with Commentator at BAM

by Nate Chinen
The New York Times
"[I]t shrewdly traffics in spectacle. As a blizzard of word, sound, image and movement, "Still Life" proposes nothing short of a sensory assault. Of course, that's exactly the point: 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."

New York Sun Feature: "Watching the World Watch Itself"

by Martin Johnson
The New York Sun

"Still Life with Commentator" Preview in New York Times Weekend Guide

by Nate Chinen
The New York Times
'STILL LIFE WITH COMMENTATOR: AN ORATORIO' The brazen theatricality of the modern news cycle has inspired no shortage of satire. "Still Life With Commentator," a multimedia performance piece that will have its premiere next week under the auspices of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, angles itself just slightly outward, implicating the viewer in its critique. Conceived as an oratorio, it's a collaborative product of the pianist Vijay Iyer and the poet Mike Ladd, whose previous work together - a 2003 Asia Society commission called "In What Language? A Song Cycle of Lives in Transit" - received wide acclaim. 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, ... with frequent flashes of improvisation by Mr. Iyer... these elements commingle suggestively. A movement called "Riding on the Intro Graphics to Cable News" has the insistent one-note stutter of an actual broadcast theme, with better beats. "Jon Stewart on Crossfire" hinges on a deadpan phrase ("Please stop; you're hurting America") that Guillermo E. Brown sings like a pop hook. The guitarist Liberty Ellman, the cellist Okkyung Lee and the vocalists Pamela Z, above; Masayasu Nakanishi; and Palina Jonsdottir contribute further to the experience, which will be staged and sculptured at the Brooklyn Academy by the conceptual artist and theatrical director Ibrahim Quraishi. If it all works, the end result should be disquieting and engaging, suggesting the intoxicating dread so often sparked by coverage of any real or manufactured crisis. It's a quandary articulated by Pamela Z's operatic soprano early on: "Surrender to nightmares for the rest of your days, just so you can say, 'I was there.' "

Brooklyn Community Access Television feature on "Still Life with Commentator" (WMV format)

Review of Vijay Iyer Quartet performance: "Iyer creates elaborate musical blends"

by Dan Emerson
St. Paul Pioneer Press
"Making his Twin Cities debut Thursday night at the Walker Art Center, pianist and composer Vijay Iyer showed why he's become one of the most acclaimed "new" artists in jazz. Iyer and his quartet played an engrossing, roughly 90-minute set of original music that skillfully blended post-bebop, classical, Indian and even funk/hip-hop colors.
In jazz or any other genre, when "new" music is created, it's often the result of combining elements from disparate cultures, genres, eras, etc. The trick is to blend those elements in a seamless, somewhat logically flowing manner, to avoid creating a musical hodgepodge.
The result is the kind of fresh-sounding, original music played by Iyer and his combo, an innovative mix of complexity and understatement...
Although he is categorized as a jazz artist, jazz is only one of the colors in his palette. Iyer's classical training and his ethnic heritage (his parents emigrated to the U.S. from India) seem equally present in his music...
The 35-year-old pianist favors lengthy, complicated melodic and rhythmic schemes akin to those found in Indian music, and elaborate arpeggios that evoke European classical music. In jazz terms, his taste for abstract surprising solo lines invites comparison to Andrew Hill, one of the great, groundbreaking pianist/composers of the post-bop era.
The band's talented alto saxophonist, Rudresh Mahanthappa, has been Iyer's collaborator and ideal onstage "sparring partner" for the past 10 years. Much of the onstage fireworks Thursday were generated by the nimble-fingered, be-boppish riffs Mahanthappa played to complement or counter Iyer's musical statements.
The funk/hip-hop rhythms in the group's sound are supplied by 20-year-old drummer Marcus Gilmore, the grandson of Hall of Fame jazz drummer Roy Haynes. The complicated rhythmic schemes found in Iyer's compositions demand a rarefied level of drum mastery and on-the-fly creativity, and the precocious Gilmore is the right man for the job.
Acoustic bassist Stephan Crump is a Memphis native whose diverse resume includes stints with blues bands, rockers and other avant-garde jazzers such as saxophonist Sonny Fortune and drummer Bobby Previte.
Put those diverse backgrounds together and the result is a band that is, in effect, a four-piece orchestra - and the musical epitome of the phrase "more than the sum of the parts."

Downbeat Magazine International Critics Poll feature: Rising Star Jazz Artist and Composer of the Year

by James Hale
Downbeat Magazine
"...not an artist who is going to cleave to the well-trod path of young jazz pianists... Iyer continues to branch out into new areas of expression."

Review of Raw Materials on OkayPlayer.com

by John Book
Okayplayer
"What you will hear is communication and dialogue not only between musicians, but between them and the listener. Simply put, this is music you have to take a serious listen... The songs on this sound like a page out of the diary of a New Yorker, especially 'Forgotten System,' as its constant frantic pace keeps you on the edge of your seat wondering which direction it will go next. Much of the tone on Raw Materials is dark and melancholy, but the metaphorical clouds break apart in the beautiful (and appropriately titled) 'Hope,' which comes off as dialogue like John Coltrane's 'Psalm' on A Love Supreme. Heartfelt is putting it lightly. It is a remarkable album that I hope will continue with more recordings together, and more explorations of music and life in their individual projects."

Review of Raw Materials

by Paul Olson
All About Jazz
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.

Review of Raw Materials

by Jay Collins
All About Jazz
[B]lending mainstream virtuosity with avant garde expressivity... they play with exuberance on assertive passages and restraint during introspective moments... Mahanthappa's circuitous spiral runs knit with Iyer's percussive arpeggios as the duo weaves an intricate tapestry... When not soaring over Iyer's pneumatic comping, Mahanthappa drifts from controlled multiphonics to searing, lyrical intensity with ease. Demonstrating the entire spectrum of his talent, Iyer modulates his attack from resounding sustain and hyper linear keyboard runs to muted chords and pianissimo rumblings during the set's ballads... Iyer and Mahanthappa's intuitive rapport makes rewarding listening. Stripped to the barest of essentials, Raw Materials proves that sometimes less is more.

Review ofRaw Materials

by K. Leander Williams
Time Out New York
"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."

eMusic review ofSimulated Progress

by Ron Wynn
Fieldwork stretch and in some instances shatter all notions regarding what constitutes both mainstream and avant-garde jazz, eschewing blues, ballads, hard bop and reconfigured show tunes. Pianist Vijay Iyer, alto saxophonist Steve Lehman and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee craft intense, compelling and often startling music emphasizing collective interplay as much as, if not more than, free-wheeling instrumental monologues. Certainly pieces like Iyer's bustling "Headlong," which blends Asian music references and odd time signatures with gorgeous keyboard phrasing, or the magical "Telematic" that smartly combines slashing drumming, a swirling, declarative alto statement and more frenetic piano, embody the experimental sensibility of outside material. But all three players are both virtuoso soloists and great accompanists, and these pieces carefully balance individual contributions and group performances. The results are delightful and memorable, if often unorthodox.

ArtForum Best Music of 2005: Debra Singer

"This stunning record reveals an extraordinary synergy among the musicians as they meld traditions of American jazz with South Indian classical music and a hint of Erik Satie."

Chicago Tribune Best of 2005: Howard Reich

Vijay Iyer: "Reimagining" (Savoy Jazz). With each recording, pianist Iyer looms as a larger figure in jazz, his sound immense, his concept bold, his ideas bracingly unorthodox. Is it possible that a single pianist on a single recording could produce such a galvanizing sweep of sound in the opening track, "Revolutions"; such spare but decisive chords in its follow-up, "Inertia"; such plush sonic effects on "Song for Midwood"? Iyer's tireless imagination on piano, and his breadth of expression as composer make "Reimagining" the epic statement it is and Iyer one of the most promising voices in jazz today.

Chicago Sun-Times Best Jazz Albums of 2005

Vijay Iyer, "Reimagining" (Savoy Jazz): Teaming, as he frequently does, with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, the Indian-American pianist combines rapturous emotion and knotty intellect, grounding his restlessly shifting patterns with his hard percussive attack

Village Voice Best Jazz Albums of 2005: Francis Davis

"VIJAY IYER:Reimagining (Savoy) Cyclical Indian rhythms new to jazz are only part of the story. The rest of it is in the young pianist's whiplash compositions and lightning rapport with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa."

Village Voice Best Jazz Albums of 2005: Nate Chinen

"VIJAY IYER:Reimagining (Savoy) Pianism is one reason to pay heed to this quartet outing, Iyer's strongest yet. Another is his rhythm concepts beguiling, befuddling, and legitimately new."

Village Voice Best of 2005: Tom Hull

FIELDWORK: Simulated Progress (Pi)

Slate Magazine: "The Jazz A-List: The best albums of the year"

by Fred Kaplan
Slate
Vijay Iyer is a daunting young pianist. Holding advanced degrees in physics as well as music, he composes in mathematical patterns, with sometimes overly schematic results. But not on this album. Reimagining, featuring his quartet, is a quiet scorcher; it simmers rather than boils. His playing relies on repetition, to the point where slight variations take on a riveting drama. He and his saxophonist, Rudresh Mahanthappa, are sons of Indian immigrants, and they work South Asian rhythms into the mix. Iyer ends the album with a hauntingly dreamlike solo take on John Lennon's "Imagine."

The Big Takeover: Adam Hill's Top 10

by Adam Hill
The Big Takeover
#1. Vijay Iyer,Reimagining (Savoy). The best thing going in jazz these days is Vijay Iyer, and this is my favorite jazz record of the year.

Slate.com article: "Two Turntables and a Saxophone"

by David Adler
Slate

Review of Fieldwork's Simulated Progress

by Ron Wynn
Rib Magazine
Fieldwork isnt exactly your prototype jazz trio. The crew includes the exciting pianist Vijay Iyer, a fiery and often surprising alto/sopranino saxophonist Steve Lehman and a sterling percussionist Elliot Humberto Kavee. The 11 pieces featured on Simulated Progress are just as unusual... [A]nyone that enjoys thoughtful, unpredictable and keenly played music will find Simulated Progress quite rewarding.

Review of Fieldwork's Simulated Progress

by David Greenberger
Metroland, Albany, NY
Fieldwork are a collective ensemble of a sort [that] first came into [its] own in the 60s. Scenes coalesced in New York City, Chicago and St. Louis, and with the advent of loft venues in the 70s, places like New Haven. The trio [has] been an especially rich format, allowing three voices to remain distinct while sympathetically addressing the sound as a whole. Fieldwork are a worthy successor to the legacy of Air and the brief but bracing tenure of Oliver Lake's trio with Pheeroan ak Laff and Michael Gregory Jackson. Anchored by pianist Vijay Iyer, now the only original member, this is the trio's second offering. With a busy schedule of diverse solo and collaborative projects, Iyer has been clear in his commitment to maintaining an equal voice for all three members, in terms of the writing, arrangements and soloing. In addition, each of them write in ways that reflect a desire to bring forth important contributions from the others. On saxophonist Steve Lehman's Media Studies, the piano's angular chordal patterns define much of the shape of the piece. Drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee's Gaudi charges forward like an engine of majestic and regal bearing, with the full assault of all three members making it ascend daringly, like its namesake's Barcelonian spires.

Review ofReimagining in Junkmedia: FIVE STARS

by Troy Collins
Junkmedia
Having made the leap to the majors, pianist and composer Vijay Iyer's Savoy debut Reimagining sounds no less intense than his previous independent releases than it does more fully realized. Where his previous quartet offerings, 2003's Blood Sutra and 2001's Panoptic Modes were youthful explorations full of brio, Reimagining inverts the equation by promoting tunefulness over unbridled enthusiasm. This recurrent focus on melody in all its bittersweet glory continues to arrive bolstered by an undercurrent of rhythmic turbulence.
The son of Indian immigrants, like his long-term foil, altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa, Iyer has a truly equitable worldview in regards to the jazz canon and its influences. Abstracted break beats, funky ostinatos, splintery tone clusters, knotty angularity, even introspective melody all make their way into his systematic structures. Iyer employs one of the most tireless rhythm sections in contemporary jazz, capable of supporting harmonic counterpoint, modulating time signatures and layered polyrhythms all at once. Long term bassist Stephan Crump holds down the low end while 19 year old newcomer (and grandson of Roy Haynes) Marcus Gilmore more than holds his own in the company of giants. Altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa is a distinctive stylist with a most cerebral approach. Like the free-er cousin of former M-Basers Greg Osby and Steve Coleman, releasing waves of cyclical arpeggios with his searing white-hot tone, he is the perfect match for Iyer's own ecstatic excursions. Hammered left hand root notes and dissonant block chords intermingle with swirling right hand pyrotechnics. Industrious without being flamboyant, Iyer occasionally reveals a deft sense of touch, especially on his deconstructed, darkly minimalist solo interpretation of John Lennon's "Imagine."
Iyer's seminal involvement with Steve Coleman's M-Base school of hyper rhythmic metric modulation and its structural dependence on polyrythms is still evident in his quartet writing. Full of angular linearity and mind-numbing time shifts, the quartet's roiling, syncopated undertow is so intricate it practically defies standard time signatures. But this time out, melody is given not only a nod, but precedent over angularity and odd time signatures. This new found focus on song forms adds one more layer to the quartet's already heady brew. Some of Iyer's most emotionally resonant playing is manifest on this album. The quartet's intricate level of interplay embodies a sense of adventurousness to it that is sorely missing in most contemporary acoustic jazz.

While Iyer and his peers Jason Moran and Matthew Shipp have long been touted as the Second Coming for post-free-jazz pianists, they have all taken pains to mature their craft and in so doing creating a body of work that is thrilling on more than just a primal level. Reimagining officially announces Iyer has fully arrived as a player to be reckoned with.

Review of Fieldwork's "Simulated Progress" in Junk Media - 4 stars

by Troy Collins
Junkmedia
"As a trio dedicated to the driving principle of rhythmic exploration, Fieldwork has few equals."

Review ofReimagining in Straight No Chaser magazine

by Derek Michael
Straight No Chaser
On this latest outing Vijay Iyer renders compositions of ominous beauty, through the polymetric strata of cascading piano and saxaphonic glossolalia, not so much accompanied as ignored by punctuation on the bass, and some ineffably elastic drumming from an 18-year old Marcus Gilmore. It's a surveillance of Euro-Afro-Asiatic-America's past-present-future, a stark terrain of tension and hope, with Iyer's ceaseless reverberations charging a hypnotic mood. 'Reimagining' follows last year's much lauded 'In What Language' , a collaboration with the inconoclastic Mike Ladd, and is further evidence that this rigorous and evolving player - accompanied here by Rudresh Mahanthappa, Stephan Crump, and the aforementioned Gilmore - is one of the most noteworthy artists of the day.

Review of Fieldwork concert in The New York Times

by Nate Chinen
The New York Times
"Collectivism can be a tricky aspiration for any jazz ensemble. Jazz is a soloist's art - that's the prevailing presumption, anyway - and it's not easy to subvert the heroic ideal. Not easy, but possible, especially in the avant-garde. And as Fieldwork proved at the Jazz Gallery on Tuesday, the results are often intriguing...
The sound of the group is darkly astringent, with an unsettled quality that hints at contemporary anxieties. Partly this is by thematic design; Mr. Iyer, in his other projects, has trafficked in sharp social commentary. More directly, the restlessness is a result of rhythmic strategies borrowed from South Indian music and other sources; Fieldwork's pulse is more cyclical than symmetrical, confounding Western notation.
Mr. Iyer was the compass and center. The absence of a bassist emphasized the range of his piano playing, which tends toward a supple sort of percussiveness - as if he were pressing, not striking, the keys. And his compositions were distinctive exercises. "Accumulated Gestures," which came near the end of the set, featured abstruse scraps of pianism, a tangle of signature phrases.
But Fieldwork doesn't sound like Mr. Iyer's other ensembles, and for good reason. Mr. Lehman and Mr. Sorey, superbly skilled musicians in their 20's, have each applied a personal stamp to the trio's sound, even as they are enveloped by it.
Mr. Sorey, who can be a steamroller in other settings, managed an undulating deftness, most strikingly on "Futile," his own composition. He fragmented the beat, but lightly, with controlled restraint. Throughout the set, his charm was in smoothing out rhythmic wrinkles and rounding sharp edges.
Mr. Lehman maintained a modest stoicism as well, refraining from any interjection that might offset the equipoise of the ensemble. He often served not as a lead voice but as a textural or structural element. On the off-kilter "Telematic," he coaxed a conch-shell tonality from his alto and then moved on to a sputtering riff that functioned as a bass line.
...[T]he rigor of the music was impossible not to admire - it was both loose-limbed and tightly controlled - and even the inscrutability was beguiling, most of the time.
Half the songs came from Fieldwork's recent album "Simulated Progress" (Pi), a document that no longer seems fully descriptive of the group's cohesion. The ultimate measure of the set was the extent to which the musicians disappeared into the fabric of the ensemble, component parts of an enigmatic whole.

Review of Fieldwork'sSimulated Progress in JazzTimes

by David Adler
JazzTimes, October 2005
"...personnel changes have not diminished Fieldwork's power and coherence... Fieldwork's rhythmic logic can be immensely involved, but the results are disarmingly concise. The music is also rich in paradox: dark yet uplifting, intellectually demanding yet effortlessly funky."

review of Fieldwork'sSimulated Progress in One Final Note

by Jay Collins
One Final Note
Pianist Vijay Iyer's last few records have placed him squarely in the vanguard of modern jazz... Iyer's music is shrewdly unique, managing to be both challenging and highly alluring at once.
As for Fieldwork... The group's sound is forged out of terse compositional sketches that are transformed due to a hearty practice regimen, resulting in energized improvisational tapestries. The musical results thrive upon the rush of Iyer's powerful pianistics and Kavee's burnished beats, while Lehman lays down or doubles the pulsing rhythms or spews forth throbbing ribbons that remind of his teachers'Anthony Braxton and Jackie McLean'but also of the glass shards of the Steve Coleman/Greg Osby axis. The program itself contains 11 varied tracks that surge with emotion, flex with tension, and bubble with dark hues.
Given the above, then, the trio's sound might easily signal M-Base comparisons, particularly on the opening polyrhythms of 'Headlong' or due to the slippery funk groove that anchors 'Telematic'. However, such accusations are too simplistic a moniker for these envelope-pushers. Indeed, the heady mix of source materials inspires an air of mysticism or solemnity that has a crucial, stark impact on the record...
Curiously, nary a day seems to go by without cries that today's artists are mere parrots or that there is nothing left to do with the music. Spin Simulated Progress and see for yourself.

Interview for Rasputin Manifesto

Review of "Reimagining" in the Hartford Advocate

by Jeff Jackson
Hartford Advocate
If you think jazz has run out of fresh voices, Vijay Iyer's Reimagining is a wake-up call, showcasing both the pianist's angular keyboard attack and memorable compositions. The album brims with spiky grooves, teasing melodies, and interlocking ensemble playing. Critics cite Iyer's use of traditional Indian rhythmic patterns, but you're just as likely to hear hints of Monk, minimalism and modern electronica. The album concludes with a blissful solo piano rendition of "Imagine," which is almost unrecognizable but succeeds on its own merits. It's a powerful nod to a jazz tradition -- making the old sound new again.

Review of "Reimagining" at Jazzreview.com

by Edward Kane
Jazzreview.com
Vijay Iyer's Reimagining is a fine album and one of the biggest releases yet from the revitalized Savoy Jazz label. Savoy has brought out discs from several distinguished artists over the last couple of years, and in signing the pianist Iyer they have added a brilliant player that seems to be squarely in his music-making prime. Reimagining is a cauldron of moods and styles, Iyer and associates keeping the music simmering but never allowing it to boil over.

Iyer's composing and playing is somewhat difficult to describe in reductionist terms. "Revolutions," for example, begins with the pianist playing a short, simple figure repeatedly a la Glass or Reich. But Iyer is no minimalist; with Marcus Gilmore's syncopation and Stephan Crump's forceful bass leading the way, the tune soon modulates into more familiar jazz territory, with Rudresh Mahanthappa's busy but sweet-toned alto saxophone cresting on top. Echoes of Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and McCoy Tyner are all audible at times and to varying degrees in his playing, but Iyer's style is unique and well-developed.

Iyer gives us nine originals and caps the set off with a highly personalized solo reading of John Lennon's "Imagine." There is a lot going on on each track of this record. Iyer's compositions are full of counterpoints, and members of the quartet run with them. It takes repeated listening to sort through everything that's going on, and it is well worth the effort to do so. Reimagining is a brilliant effort from Vijay Iyer and a coup for Savoy Jazz.

Review of "Simulated Progress" on NPR's Fresh Air

by Kevin Whitehead

review of "Simulated Progress" in San Diego Union-Tribune

by George Varga
Between them, the three members of Fieldwork have collaborated with a dizzying array of artists, from Me'Shell Ndegocello and Dead Prez to avant-jazz visionaries Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill and San Diego's Mark Dresser. On their second album, "Simulated Progress," pianist Vijay Iyer, saxophonist Steve Lehman and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee (who has since been replaced by Tyshawn Sorey) engage in a series of 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. They also benefit from the aural expertise of Scotty Hard, whose previous production and engineering credits range from Wu Tang Clan and Salif Keita to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Einsturzende Neubauten. The result is a heady, punchy outing that could serve as a template for daring, forward-looking musicians everywhere.

Prefix magazine - capsule review of Fieldwork's "Simulated Progress"

Prefix magazine
Fieldwork is the sound of jazz exploding and raining down shards of glass upon our heads... [T]he piano-sax-drums trio wraps dense harmonic sheets around off-kilter rhythmic patterns that manage to groove no matter how mind-bogglingly complex they get. Fieldwork's music is foreboding and unrelentingly intense, with a dark mysticism that places it somewhere between Indian classical music and Coltrane's A Love Supreme.

Village Voice Shortlist for Fieldwork

by Jim Macnie
Here's a jazz trio that forces abstraction to take on a lyrical cogency while still yielding to kinetics. So at various points Vijay Iyer's clusters and Steve Lehman's shredding take on an oddly reflective mood. These "against-type" moments help make Simulated Progress a tension-filled achievement. New drummer Tyshawn Sorey is sure to bring some curves to their signature angles.

Review of Fieldwork's "Simulated Progress" on All About Jazz

by Paul Olson
All About Jazz
...a dazzling, intrepid sort of new jazz that's as deeply interactive as anything you're likely to hear this year... Stuff like this feels genuinely dangerous. Like three mountain climbers roped together, this trio traverses musical precipices that are real, immense, and perilous. Yet there's a restraint and control that make this in many ways the antithesis of free jazz... The greatest compliment that can be paid to Simulated Progress is that there is nothing else out there that sounds like it. This is difficult music. In its risk-taking, fragility, and fearlessness, it's also very thrilling.

Boston Globe Feature: "Like his genre-bending music, pianist knows no borders"

by Siddhartha Mitter
The Boston Globe
If there is a jazz musician of the moment, Vijay Iyer may well be it. The Indian-American pianist has gone in the past year from underground favorite to emerging mainstream sensation with a gripping, thought-provoking sound and a body of work that includes straight-ahead post-bop efforts, avant-garde collective improvisation, and collaborations with poets, rappers, and DJs... It takes Iyer just a few bars to demolish the false distinction between ''cerebral" and ''emotional" music. His approach is both at once. It has a rigorous, geometric quality, the sort of searching tone that induces both melancholy and insight, and moments of rapture that are nothing short of spine-tingling. The key to all three effects is rhythm, which Iyer establishes by means of vamps and cyclical forms, rolling the keys like waves in a steady wind. It's a music of momentum, always lurching forward even in its quietest phases... Like his predecessors in the ''percussive" school of jazz piano -- Thelonious Monk, Andrew Hill, Randy Weston, Muhal Richard Abrams, Cecil Taylor, all of whom he cites as influences -- Iyer has taken on the challenge of generating rhythm and phrase, structure and form. It means that he rarely lays out, nor does he take many conventional solos, when playing in a group. But he can also use rhythm and repetition to produce dense, haunting atmospherics working at his piano alone... The current quartet gathers Iyer, Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump, and the remarkable 18-year-old drummer Marcus Gilmore, a grandson of venerable Boston drummer Roy Haynes. As Iyer's roiling sound propels Mahanthappa's saxophone over the turbulence, his soaring melodic style redolent of John Coltrane, the two display the sort of intuitive connection that produces great improvised music.

Featured Listing in New York Times for week of June 17-23

The New York Times
He appeared about 10 years ago in the San Francisco Bay Area, a very young jazz pianist bursting with micro- and macro- and meta-theories. He wanted to unite jazz and funk, Indian drone elements and swing; he also seemed to want to synthesize four pianists, related but still diverse: Duke Ellington, Andrew Hill, Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor... Now Mr. Iyer, above, leads a quartet that includes Mr. Mahanthappa, Mr. Crump and the drummer Marcus Gilmore, who is only 19 [sic] but has the potential to become one of the bulldozing presences in New York jazz. The band's most recent album, "Reimagining" (Savoy Jazz), is its best, and Mr. Iyer's gigs are attaining a newly urgent momentum, with some genuine lyricism offsetting the rhythm attack. He's a jazz musician of the moment, and now's the time to hear him.

All About Jazz interview with Vijay Iyer

by Paul Olson
All About Jazz

Review of Reimagining in All Music Guide

by Thom Jurek
All Music Guide
A decade into his recording career, pianist/composer/bandleader Vijay Iyer is still a startlingly original voice in jazz. His dense and often knotty harmonic conceptions and his modal approach to melodic invention are idiosyncratic yet wonderfully accessible to listeners; his rhythmic conceptions are unusual, yet always swing, and his improvisational facility as a soloist places him in a very small league of jazzmen. Reimagining is another exercise in complex compositions where the notion of song is brought to the fore. Accompanied by his longtime front-line alter ego, Rudresh Mahanthappa, on alto saxophone, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, Iyer creates song forms from the place that is as far as East as from the West -- the magical and murky, imagined interzone, where the music of the Indo-Asian Diaspore meets the Western Jazz tradition. That is to say, these forms establish the next extension in both traditions. The beautiful loping "Song for Midwood" is a case in point. Where one can hear the influence of Jan Garbarek's assertion that space dictates the placement of melody, here, it is the situating of two minimal phrases in space that offers a new visible dimension for the lyric line to emerge from and return to. The nearly funky backbeat groove on "Infogee's Cakewalk" offers the listener a foothold into an angular -- not dissonant -- sonic world where counterpoint, repetition, interlaced rhythmic assertions, and scalar invention all meld together into something that truly swings. And so it goes. Whether it's the chordal mode strata that opens onto the body of a tune so elegiac and sweet it is heartbreaking, as on "The Big Almost," or the seamless, nearly formless fragments that assert themselves into unified voices on "Composites," the effect is the same: 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.

Review in JazzTimes

by Thomas Conrad
JazzTimes
Iyer is an academic, but he is entirely self-taught as a pianist and possesses the infinite free choices of the autodidact. His music contains his South Asian heritage and also a vast array of interests and influences, including diverse world musics, his own academic disciplines, rock 'n' roll and a preoccupation with John Coltrane (who was strongly affected by Indian music). The outcome is heady drones, swirling sonic washes and endlessly intricate counterpoint. Iyer's music fulfills a deep-seated need of many improvised-music fans: to hear what has never been heard before. Many players promise it. Few deliver. Iyer does.

Reimagining carries over alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and bassist Stephan Crump from Iyer's widely praised previous recording, Blood Sutra. Eighteen-year-old Marcus Gilmore is the new drummer. All sound entirely at home in this very special musical house, especially Mahanthappa, who fills the tiniest spaces in Iyer's pianistic densities with bright penetrations, in fierce contrapuntal continuums. There are no comfort zones-no familiar rhythmic patterns, no beginnings or middles or ends. Yet pieces like "Experience" and "Revolutions" make you remember the defining moments of the John Coltrane Quartet, when musical careening suddenly coheres into a liberated lyricism you never saw coming. Meanwhile, the heavy, ominous chords at first surround John Lennon's innocent "Imagine" in darkness, but break through into a more hopeful single-note affirmation of the melody at the end. The most interesting question about Iyer is how, having fully elaborated a unique and specific musical space, he goes forward from here.

"Beyond Borders": review in Detroit Free Press

by Mark Stryker
Detroit Free Press
Globalism has long been a fact of life in jazz. But in recent years the free trade of ideas has picked up steam, broadening the expressive language of the music with new influences, and deepening the connections between American swing, improvisation and blues with rhythms, grammar and formal devices from an ever-expanding menu of fresh source material...

Iyer's quartet -- which includes longtime partner Rudresh Mahanthappa on alto, Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums -- is ... remarkably close knit. The music on "Reimagining" is dense with waves of odd-metered Indian and funk rhythms, open harmony, heart-of-darkness overtones, incantatory solos and a churning pool of group interaction.

On "Revolutions," the pianist's rolling ideas spill through both hands like a rushing river. His touch is liquid and percussive. Mahanthappa's edgy and careening alto is similarly contoured. "Inertia" finds Iyer evoking modern classical influences with ominously repeating pedal chords in the left hand and a prickly right hand melody wandering like a spooky apparition.

"Song for Midwood" suggests a meditative chant. A scent of funk emanates from "Infogee's Cakewalk." "Cardio" and "Phalanx" propose layers of polyrhythms that are tricky to count but yield emotionally satisfying music... These players are forging their own sound full of discipline, freedom and surprise, and that's what jazz is all about.

Feature article in JazzTimes

by Nate Chinen
JazzTimes
[R]ecently, ... I reexamined the peculiar position Iyer inhabits in the realm of jazz. A distinctive pianist and intensely creative composer, he has been lauded not only by the usual sources but also such jazz-averse publications as U.S. News and World Report. Still, it's unlikely that many at IAJE had ever heard his music. Those who had were likely to subject it to categorization-as evidenced by the well-intentioned urge to uphold Iyer as a spokesman for "jazz and hip-hop," or "jazz and Indian music," or "jazz and racial considerations." This is the pigeonholing that keeps Iyer at arm's length from the jazz tradition, despite his own intentions and experience. The irony is that his work preempts such perceptions...

Beyond the Melting Pot
[Village Voice feature article on Vijay Iyer & Rudresh Mahanthappa]

by Francis Davis
The Village Voice
...so strong in conception and performance it seems only a matter of time before the same sort of consensus Jason Moran inspired a few years ago begins to form around Iyer... Iyer's triumph is in understanding that composition and improvisation each have something to gain when they overlap. There's something novel going on from beginning to end in each track, and although it's occasionally a simple matter of dynamics (as on "Inertia," the album's closest thing to a ballad), it's more often a case of rhythmic layering or metrical subdivision (examples include "Song for Midwood," which proves 7/4 can be funky, and "Infogee's Cakewalk," which reconfigures a hip-hop rhythm into New Orleans second line). I'm unable to say if any of this is the result of childhood osmosis or Iyer's self-conscious immersion in traditional Carnatic music as an adult. I know too little about Indian music, North or South, to speak with authority, besides which jazz is still a melting pot'it's assimilated so many diverse musical strains by this point, and particularly in recent years, that attempting to pinpoint where in the world anything came from is a fool's game.

Review on AllAboutJazz.com

by Paul Olson
All About Jazz
...an organic, austere consistency of vision and accomplishment that's simply stunning... The quartet of Iyer, altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump, and new drummer Marcus Gilmore achieves an internal sympathy and rapport that's unsurpassed by any working jazz group today... Iyer's work has a tempering emotional content that separates him from the majority of his New York peers; it's technically demanding, but it serves a deeper muse of pure feeling... Writers have compared Iyer and Mahanthappa's rapport to that of McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane, and the music is often built around ostinati and modes. But there's an equality of status between Iyer and Mahanthappa, and a uniqueness of attack, that render the comparison helpful but insufficient. No two jazz players today work together with such unified purpose.

"Iyer quartet emerging as formidable force"
[Review of Quartet concert at Chicago's Green Mill]

by Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune
In the past decade or so, a new generation of jazz artists has reinvigorated the art form with the musical impulses of foreign cultures... The point rang out again over the weekend, when pianist Vijay Iyer led his startlingly effective quartet at the Green Mill Jazz Club. Joined by alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, a comparably adventurous musician who could be considered Iyer's alter ego (or vice versa), the pianist-bandleader explored the place where American jazz and traditional Indian music intersect, while also pushing into otherwise unexpected territory.Iyer and Mahanthappa for years have brought elements of their Indian cultural heritage to bear on their jazz improvisations, but never before has the merger sounded as persuasive or seamless as it did Friday night at the Green Mill. Rather than merely apply Indian scales and melodic patterns to jazz-improvisational techniques, they absorbed the spirit and sensibility of this music into the framework of an unflinchingly forward-looking jazz quartet. Imagine the fervor of Indian chant ' with its hypnotically repeated, gloriously melismatic turns of phrase ' pulsing in a music that's already harmonically pungent and rhythmically alive, and you have a rough idea of the urgency and originality of this idiom. Yet Iyer, in particular, never veered into densely arcane passagework or abstruse chordal structures. If in previous years he sometimes has overstated his case, nearly overwhelming the music with all-over-the-keyboard virtuosity, on this occasion he tempered his pianism. By offering lushly pictorial playing on "Revolutions," introspective soliloquies on "Inertia" and traces of funk rhythm in other works, Iyer rendered his approach more accessible than ever. The same tunes, incidentally, drive Iyer's exceptional new recording, the aptly named "Reimagining" (on Savoy Jazz).
Anyone who heard Mahanthappa when he lived in Chicago, in the 1990s, will recall the torrents of sound that he produced on alto saxophone. But Mahanthappa has come a long way since then, harnessing his energy, enriching his tone and focusing his improvisations. The smoldering intensity of his sometimes fleet, sometimes incantatory phrases, particularly on the searing "Song for Midwood," represented a new highpoint in his maturation.Yet this quartet wouldn't be nearly so powerful were it not for the rhythmic collaboration among Iyer, pianist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. The three players practically have become a single rhythmic organism; if they build on this achievement in coming years, they could emerge as one of the great rhythm units of the day.

Amazon.com Editorial review of Reimagining

by Lloyd Sachs
Amazon.com
With "Reimagining," his first album for Savoy Jazz, pianist Vijay Iyer moves on up in terms of visibility -- and in terms of accomplishment. This is his strongest effort yet, balancing rapturous emotion and knotty intellect, melodic flow and rhythmic heft...

FIVE-STAR REVIEW of Reimagining

by Charles Walker
Sudden Thoughts
[O]n occasion[,] some new disc ' like this one ' puts everything in perspective, sending you scrambling to hide all your heavy sights and woe-is-me waiting because something truly great has finally arrived on your doorstep... it is the rare disc such as pianist Vijay Iyer's transcendent new Reimagining that makes the piles of halfway-energetic almost-theres sound like so much sonic spare change... The real surprise here is that it doesn't even sound all that separate from his earlier work ' angular and edgy small-group fringe bop, M-BASE abstraction motored by ringing, almost elegiac arpeggio repetitions; but on record, Iyer's own voice has never been so focused, so clear, and so devastatingly powerful in its emotional heft. It is knotty, but not too; turgid, but full of tangible hooks that grip at the core; underscored with tiny, writhing renovations on the fly that neither tear the structure down nor leave it standing still for too long: in short, it is the first great jazz album of 2005. Melancholy musings about the 'state of jazz' can be checked on your right, to be retrieved at the end of the show... Iyer is equipped with a whole arsenal of gimmick-less tricks, and hearing him unfurl one astonishing surprise after another is a true delight: sudden tempo changes, cat-and-mouse intervallic substitutions, telepathic two-handed in(ter)dependence; these are the axles around which the pianist's full-bodied improvisations rotate.... Reimagining stands as his first unequivocally great statement as a leader ' his intimidating technical prowess is placed in the service of a soulful, cerebral personality... to create his own unique, important space on the sonic map.

Review of "Reimagining" in Signal to Noise

by Colin Buttimer
Eleventh Volume
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. The album ends with a solo piano cover of John Lennon's Imagine which appears to act as a cornerstone for the whole project. The song is turned into a seesawing, driving and complex piece at whose heart is a new determination arguably lacking in the original.

Boston Globe review of In What Language?: "Exhilarating jazz, spoken word take off in airport setting"

by Siddhartha Mitter
Boston Globe
For all the talk about the emergence of global culture, art that successfully explores the emotional content of globalization remains rare. ''In What Language?," a project of jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and writer, producer, and performer Mike Ladd, is 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.
The CD version of ''In What Language?" was one of last year's best new releases, a forward-looking jazz hybrid with a global hip-hop sensibility. But as a large audience at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst's Fine Arts Center discovered Thursday evening, the project achieves its fullest impact as a multimedia stage piece. Eleven musicians and vocalists improvise to Iyer's composition and Ladd's libretto in front of a huge screen flickering with images of airports and the activities that take place there.
Iyer is one of the most exciting new voices in jazz, as comfortable with fragmented and spliced electronic production as he is with straight-ahead phrasings. He's assembled a group of kindred spirits, mainly from the New York scene, including saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and an extraordinary cellist, Okkyung Lee. As befits the airport theme, the sound proceeds in gaps and rushes, reflective at points and at others exhilarating, particularly when Iyer drives his hypnotic piano chords to crescendo.
Ladd, who was raised in Boston and attended Hampshire College, is the sort of polymath poet who gives ''spoken word" a good name. He and fellow vocalists Latasha Diggs, Allison Easter, and Rizwan Mirza, whose precise facial movements recalled the elegance of Indian classical dance, assume a series of identities: the South Asian cab driver, the Senegalese vendor, the Iraqi businessman, the Jamaican woman who operates the airport X-ray machine.
The characters are poignant and full of humor, never caricatures, a completely believable lens onto what the authors call the ''hyphenated perspectives" of our time. This honesty, most of all, is what distinguishes the project and allows it to sidestep all the clich's that globalization usually evokes. Iyer and Ladd call their project ''not just a collection of travelers' tales. . . . It is our attempt to make sense of the tumultuous world around us." For all the dislocation they portray -- migration, exile, deportation -- their outlook is optimistic, even exciting.

Philadelphia Inquirer feature on IWL: "Theater of turbulence"

by Gaiutra Bahadur
Philadelphia Inquirer
The immigrant experience, packed into airports ringing with song, checks in at the Painted Bride...

Review of Merkin Hall concert

by Nate Chinen
The Village Voice

feature preview in New York Press

by Alan Lockwood
The New York Press
Live, Iyer's a study in well-situated ease and concentrated intensity. At a busy Tonic benefit at last year, he opened with his band then swept over that venue's weary piano as if he were in the Bosendorfer showroom, weaving intricate melodic textures with a driving sense of rhythm...

Review of NYC Winter JazzFest

by Bill Milkowski
JazzTimes
In the Tap Bar, Vijay Iyer's Quintet [sic] lit up the cramped confines with new material from an upcoming Savoy debut, Reimagining (due out in May). With alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa blowing with white hot intensity and Bird-like facility, bassist Stephan Crump weaving deep, sinuous counterpoint lines and the amazing drum prodigy, 17-year-old Marcus Gilmore (Roy Haynes' grandson), crackling behind the kit with uncanny precision and power, Iyer's band delivered a dynamic set marked by provocative, high-energy blowouts like the urgent 'Revolution' and the darkly dissonant 'Inertia.' For a change of pace they offered the poignant 'Song [for] Midwood,' Iyer's ode to the Brooklyn neighborhood also known as Little Pakistan...

**Also see press links for Fieldwork**

5 STARS / CD OF THE WEEK

by Luca vtx Leccese
All About Jazz / Italy
...il pianista Vijay Iyer... ' impeccabile nelle esecuzioni delle tracce acustiche, laddove quelle pi' di matrice elettronica sono, come al solito, orchestrate magnificamente dal nostro Ladd.

NY TIMES: India Resounds in New York

by Jon Pareles
The New York Times

Review in Jazzman (France) - CHOC! (highest rating)

by Alex Dutilh
Jazzman (France)
Atmosph're mouvante, entre-deux entre jazz et rap, entre message engag' et musique sensuelle, entre vibration acoustique et vision electronique, entre densit' des textures et 'vidence des mots. Une musique forte, br'lante, urgente, brillante... irr'sistible.

Hybrid and Alive: Interview with Vijay Iyer

by Manu Vimalassery
Samar magazine

Review ofIn What Language? inPop Matters

by Stefan Braidwood
Pop Matters

Reviews of "In What Language?" & "Blood Sutra" inThe Wire

by Matthew Ingram, Andy Hamilton
The Wire
[onIn What Language?]... The predominant theme is modern jazz, unsurprising given the heavyweight credentials of Iyer... This isn't to ignore that Iyer's playing here owes as much to Steve Reich as Don Pullen... the text provides ample motivation for this eclectic collage of sounds...Ladd is particularly impressive in character as [Last Poet] Jalal Nuriddin... This fusion of performance poetry and jazz carries echoes of The Last Poets, the operatic ambitions of Archie Shepp'sAttica Blues, shades of Divine Styler's jazz-inflectedSpiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light and even dystopian touches from Jon Hassell'sCity: Works of Fiction.

[onBlood Sutra] "It's good to see John Snyder resurrecting his Artists House label and especially to see him working with pianist Vijay Iyer. Once a member of the Bay Area's Asian-American scene, Iyer has returned to New York and has a new group... The plangent spread chords of the opening 'Proximity' are a clarion. They presage dark, challenging explorations such as 'Brute Facts,' an exercise in brutalism, turbid and unremitting, with the pianist pushing Mahanthappa to ecstatic heights in his solos. Confirmation that Iyer is one of the scene's most original players."

Review of Blood Sutra

by Michael Rosenstein
One Final Note
On [his previous] releases, Iyer charted a truly pan-cultural aesthetic, combining a foundation in free jazz with his South Indian cultural roots; all refracted through a highly personalized view of melodic, rhythmic, and improvisational development... -- Iyer has constructed a pulsating flow from twelve compositional frameworks that move back and forth between tight, collective counterpoint and multi-threaded spontaneity. Pieces segue into each other with an organic sense, paced with time signatures that weave a complex pattern, drawing on free jazz pulse, allusions to South Indian classical forms, and even hip-hop groove. But it is all pulled off so naturally that the listener gets carried along in the infectious flow. Part of the reason may be the striking melodies that form a connective thread for the improvisations. A piece like "Because of Guns (hey joe redux)" is a perfect example, deconstructing the core theme of Hendrix's signature tune into a free-blues swagger. -- But more importantly, it is the skilled musicianship of the quartet. Iyer spins off constantly morphing variations on the melodic themes while prodding and stretching at the pulse. Mahanthappa's tart alto provides a perfect foil, playing off of Iyer's fractured lines with countering, angular logic full of jubilant vigor. Crump's bass expands the role of time-keeper; providing a critical melodic and rhythmic anchor for the cascading pieces. This frees up Sorey, who responds with an elastic sense of rhythm that carries the music along with a buoyant energy. What is so astounding is that, as accomplished as it is, this release represents only a single facet of Iyer's music. Anyone wondering if the jazz quartet has lost its vitality should look no further than this release.

NY Press feature

by Molly Sheridan
New York Press
...it feels like I can't open a magazine these days without seeing composer/pianist Vijay Iyer's name in it... It probably helps that he's just put out two new discs: Blood Sutra, which grabbed the No. 8 spot on the JazzTimes 2003 critics' poll and In What Language?, a collaboration with spoken-word artist/poet Mike Ladd that neatly draws on elements of jazz, funk, hiphop etc., to tackle the experience of navigating airport security these days as person of color. Much like Phil Kline's recent Zippo Songs, In What Language? is strikingly good music that also comments more boldly and directly on our current political/social reality than most newspaper editorials.... His music carries a lot of different influences, usually including an energy and a beat that make it hard to sit still...

Review ofIn What Language? in Straight No Chaser

"Arpeggios crash beneath the voice of Mike Ladd. Complimenting metaphors of social, political, and personal commentary are juxtaposed within the framework of Airport travels. An unusual concept... Ladd's ingenious use of language shines through each self-penned lyric. The soundscapes created by Vijay Iyer move between classical, urban improvisation, the abstract and unclassifiable. They create a homogenous balance between voice and message, each of which is personalised by an array of characters. 'In What Language?' encoudages dedicated listening; a much needed challenge for those of us being starved of anything thought provoking!"

Review ofIn What Language? in Jazzwise (UK)

by Kevin Le Gendre
Jazzwise (UK)
"Iyer is one of the most interesting young American improvisers that you probably haven't heard of... Mike Ladd is the maverick MC and spoken wordsmith who you should have heard of... Iyer and Ladd's collaboration slides almost directly into the lineage of... bridge building between the worlds of the avant-garde and electronica. It's sonically exciting, idiomatically blurring. Most of allIn What Language? is a political tour de force; a vivid, cogent, at times arresting 17 piece song cycle that becomes a powerful evocation of the immigrant experience at zero hour, where predatory paranoia poisons race relations to the core. Iyer and ladd... come across as two hemispheres of the same brain. The pianist has written in an agitated and agitating fashion, using semi-classical motifs and spooky spirals of chords as the flickering lights that illuminatae the runway of Ladd's texts. At times Iyer's compositions float as statically and oppressively as those customs queues that never moves, at times they shuttle into intense, intrepid propulsion, like the blue touch paper arguments that break out over 'ID'. In each piece there is light, shade, ebb, and flow in the music that sketches out drum & M-base or haunted Asian-inflected laments where Iyer's harmonic subtleties come to the fore. Imagine this in conjunction with penetrating Ladd lines such as 'We are the vegetation that will subdue the lobby in the airport' and you have a profound, potent work... [an] important, moving meditation on the destructive static of discrimination... an artistically accomplished protest piece from two brave, uncompromising players... The airport is not a neutral place. And this is not a neutral album."

ROLLING STONE DOUBLE REVIEW in David Fricke's "Out There" column, Issue 944 (March 18, 2004)

by David Fricke
Rolling Stone
"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.
[onBlood Sutra] "Here's another reason why Iyer is a rising star in jazz: a straight-ahead date of dynamic composition and rapturous improvisation with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Stephan Crump and Tyshawn Sorey... Iyer is fond of unanswered questions, writing melodies that romp and soar just shy of resolution. But the four musicians explore and distend these tunes - including a turbulent variation on the folk-rock murder ballad "Hey Joe" - in the literal spirit of the album title: with the hot, tight telepathy of blood kin."

"Suite Revenge": Guardian (UK) feature onIn What Language

by John Walters
The Guardian
"...a stimulating collection of travellers' tales. Ladd's words get under the skin of several characters... You might expect an angry blast, given the subject matter, and the mood is certainly tense, but the words, whether opaque, poetic or direct, thankfully lack the whingeing profanity of everyday hip-hop and address a complex subject with subtlety - even humour. Iyer's music embraces many styles, from sequenced beats (Three Lotto Stories) through edgy swing (The Color of My Circumference IV) to a chilled, dinner-jazz ambience (Taking Back the Airplane), featuring Liberty Ellman's guitar, Allison Easter's supple spoken-word performance and the composer's chiming piano."

Utne Weeder: Our Favorite New Books, Music, More

by Keith Goetzman
Utne Reader
[onBlood Sutra]"This young Indian American pianist knows his Ellington as well as his Monk, and his vibrant music deftly bridges the pre- and post-bop worlds while adding a fresh Asian twist... Iyer is an intellectual yet passionate player to look out for."

Billboard review ofIn What Language?

by Anastasia Tsioulcas
Billboard
Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and poet Mike Ladd understand the strange energy of an airport: constant restlessness, sterile anonymity and an ultra-charged atmosphere post-Sept. 11, 2001. With Iyer working as composer and Ladd as librettist, the two weave together elements of jazz, hip-hop and spoken-word art into a new, subversive kind of song cycle. Shifting constantly between narratives, their kaleidoscopic lens sees the airline passenger as both the viewer and the viewed. Cultural and political references fly fast and furious, shifting as quickly as the musical mood. As much as this album is a potent political statement, it is also a fine work of music'just listen to the crackling energy of "The Density of the 19th Century," the Reich-like, hypnotic, circling piano figures of "DeGaulle" or the rolling, majestic balladry of "Plastic Bag." This is a disc that demands repeat listening.

Review in the New York Times: "An album devoted to the post-9/11 airport"

by Ben Ratliff
The New York Times
...With a seven-piece band playing odd-meter funk, lulling ambient chords, blots of rhythm under Indian-accented raps, it's that elusive thing, underground political music that sounds good. And though its points of origin are far from the mainstream of either hip-hop or jazz, let's count it as a breakthrough hip-hop-jazz fusion. Because if we do, it's one of the smartest I've heard, and one of the few that really works.

Review ofIn What Language?: FIVE STARS

by Charles Walker
Sudden Thoughts
"Once in a while an album comes along that so completely synthesizes the disparate sounds of its time that one can almost hear the shifting of future recordings as they scramble to adjust to the new standard...In What Language? is an absolutely critical release... [D]espite all of the damaged transit and interrupted stop gap motion of its unfolding, it ultimately unfurls with moments of untranslatable, authoritative communication, leaving behind a broad-ranging yet focused story that says important truths about our society to those willing to listen. At the threshold of our 21st Century, there could hardly be a more telling terminus by which to observe the interaction of these currents, cradled carefully past their disconnections into creative synthesis."

Double review inSignal to Noise, winter 2004

by Jay Collins
Signal to Noise magazine
...challenging, potent music that takes risks and offers substantial rewards...In What Language? [is] a monumental work that seamlessly combines sound and voice for an artistic statement that should reverberate for years to come... It is simply a masterpiece...

Best albums of 2003

JazzTimes
Blood Sutra andIn What Language made numerous critics' top-ten lists as well as the overall top-50 list:Blood Sutra ranked #8 overall;In What Language is #41.

Review ofIn What Language? in All Music Guide

by Chris Nickson
All Music Guide
"Inspired by the experience of an Iranian filmmaker wrongly detained by INS officials at JFK airport in New York, this epic work explores life through the microcosm of the airport -- a place of arrival and departure, of being an alien or leaving one's citizenship behind. Poet/hip-hop man Mike Ladd has done a superb job with the lyrics, polished by real little monologues that examine all aspects of the problem -- and it's a problem that often leaves travelers dehumanized. Keyboard player Vijay Iyer gives tone and color to all this in his compositions, and the two together become more than a sum of their parts. It's not an easy album to listen to -- often harrowing, as in "Innana After Baghdad" or "Terminal City" -- but more than repays the investment of ears and time. Is it jazz? Not really. It falls outside category -- as it should, given the subject matter involved. At first it can sound simplistic, but it soon becomes apparent that the textures and depths of the music only reveal themselves gradually, such as with "Asylum." Written originally to be performed on-stage in a theatrical setting, it transfers well to a purely recorded medium, dense and demanding, but ultimately satisfying, inasmuch as it leaves the listener full of questions and less certain about the world."

Best jazz of 2003 in San Jose Mercury

by Richard Scheinin
San Jose Mercury News
Pianist/keyboardist Iyer fuses post-Coltrane jazz, hip-hop rhythms and the political texts of poet Ladd in this spirited suite from one of jazz's best new indie labels.

Best jazz of 2003

by Nate Chinen
Philadelphia City Paper
"Iyer has been a critical favorite for a few years now, but never before have his ideas found so articulate an expression. Together with this year's operatic epic, In What Language? (Pi), Blood Sutra reveals the pianist's acute sensitivity to theme and variation, and his experimental yet ever-accessible approach."

Best jazz of 2003 in Stride Magazine, UK

by Nate Dorward
Stride Magazine
Iyer's fourth disc, this is easily his best so far, still having the fierceness of Panoptic Modes but now more subtly modulated over the course of the album, & finally peaking on a wrenching, epic reading of "Hey Joe".

NPR/Studio 360 feature story on "In What Language?"

Studio 360
The internationally syndicated radio program Studio 360 had a program focusing on the theme of "Flight," with co-host Erica Jong (author of "Fear of Flying"). An audio recording of the show is archived on the site - scroll down for the feature on IWL.

Feature in Chamber Music

by Gene Santoro
Chamber Music
"The first thing you feel is the energy. Sitting in a New York club where Vijay Iyer's quartet is performing, you are buffeted by gusts of intensity, information encoded in such viscerally propulsive musical form it apparently won't be denied -- even if, thanks to the elusive process of artistic refraction, that information can't be fully decoded on the first, fifteenth, or fiftieth listening. When the group tears into a Jimi Hendrix tribute, "Hey Joe" ["Because of Guns"], the stunning ten minutes embodies homage without dwindling into mimicry: Iyer's Monk-ish percussive piano and deft pedals mix and spread tones in a dense rainbow of harmonics, evoking the thick, chewy textures of Hendrix's revolutionary guitar. The polyrhythms ride serrated edges, cluster and burst, evoking Hendrix's rhythm section's emulation of John Coltrane's; the recurrent coil-and-release charges the music with fevered immediacy despite its intellectual structures, its often complex meters and harmonies. Though there isusually a soloist, mostly foregrounded is the group's kinetic motion, the mobile interaction of its parts; foreground and background lap and dissolve. As physical assault, Iyer & Co. may not rival Metallica, but they rock this 150-seat venue the same way Trane inspired rockers like Hendrix with his rich art's slash-to-the-soul cutting edge..."

4 1/2 star Review in Down Beat! Double review of "In What Language?" and "Blood Sutra"

by Glenn Astarita
Down Beat Magazine, December 2003
Pianist/composer Vijay Iyer is a rhythmic powerhouse...
[OnIn What Language?] 4 1/2 STARS (OUT OF 5) Iyer and Ladd interconnect layers of effects to complement an electro-acoustic production awash with looping ostinato grooves, horns, string overlays and perky funk/techno beats. Ladd and the actors' recitations are extraordinarily moving...
[OnBlood Sutra]... the quartet goes for the gusto via an abundance of strenuously enacted grooves... the soloists' harmonically inventive choruses impart a symmetrically oriented odyssey of discovery.

Holiday gift idea (!) from the San Francisco Weekly

SF Weekly
Jeez, with all the comfort and joy flying around this season, you might require some sounds with teeth as a tonic. To that end, meet Vijay Iyer... [P]ianist Iyer followed the yellow brick road from the Bay Area to the Big Apple, from whence springs Blood Sutra, a set of thorny, economical compositions for piano, sax, acoustic bass, and drums. Iyer's style is a fine balance between brainy abstraction, quirky lyricism, and percussive vigor.

LEAD DOUBLE REVIEW IN JAZZTIMES

by Nate Chinen
JazzTimes, November 2003
"This year could well serve as a landmark for Iyer. In particular, the fall release of these two recordings constitutes an accomplishment akin to critical mass...
"The cohesive group's ethos [onBlood Sutra] is at once reflective and kinetic... There's something utterly distinct about Iyer's approach. His piano playing can be broad and onsweeping or minutely detailed, but the primary constant is the suppleness of his touch and the liquid warmth of his tone. His way with the quartet is equally impressive, especially with regard to pulse: The ensemble's rhythmic patterns don't seem imposed or dictated so much as issued effortlessly from a center, like the concentric ripples on a pond... [W]ithout crossing into pretentiousness, Iyer's crew manages to avoid many of the standard trappings of small-group jazz... This is exciting and eminently listenable stuff, intuitive in bearing and dynamic in execution. An essential for adventurous listeners,Blood Sutra could also serve as an ideal introduction to Iyer's burgeoning oeuvre...
"The great success ofIn 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... More than anything, 'In What Language?' signals a culmination of Iyer's vision. The music he presents here -- groovy and shape-shifting, slippery yet concrete -- amounts to a tour de force... Steeped in the language of South Asian and pan-African culture but trafficking in universal impulses, the suite fulfills not only the dictates of its premise but also the actualization of Iyer's fascinating and still-evolving conception."

Review ofBlood Sutra inJazziz, November 2003

by Eric Waggoner
Jazziz
"Vijay Iyer builds on the promise of 2000'sPanoptic Modes.Blood Sutra simply raises Iyer's writing and playing to the next level.Panoptic Modes was, in large part, a meditation on the heavy Asian influences in Iyer's percussive compositional style... By contrast,Blood Sutra finds him engaging in sharply diverse but well-balanced forms on each track - and coming up a winner every time...
Scarcely into his thirties, Iyer plays with the confidence of an artist several decades older. The precision of his quartet is a factor as well. Rudresh Mahanthappa and Stephan Crump are longtime collaborators, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey might as well be. The music is so tight that there's barely space between the notes.
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.

Review of Blood Sutra in Paris Transatlantic

by Nate Dorward
Paris Transatlantic
While the dancing Indian rhythms thatPanoptic Modes drew upon aren't left behind on the new disc, the intensity of its newfound engagement with the rhythmic energy of pop (from rock to hip-hop) is immediately noticeable, and the results strikingly original. Iyer has long since stopped sounding like anyone in particular, though passages can suggest everything from Andrew Hill toThe Inner Mounting Flame. The plethora of jazz artists who seem to think time signatures like 5/4 and 7/8 are still "daring" should be strapped down and forced to listen to what he's doing - it's so complex in places that it's hard to figure out what the basic count is, yet it actually comes off with the kind of deep-set, compulsive groove that Greg Osby would kill for. Sorey is a key addition: with Crump and/or Iyer's left hand keeping hold of the pulse, he ranges further afield than Phillips. Like other state-of-the-art drummers (Nasheet Waits comes to mind), he seems to be on perpetual fast forward or rewind, the drums tumbling, stuttering and miraculously righting themselves.
This is often severe music, but its intensities and hard-won ecstasies are of the kind that invite rather than repel. The pianist's short note in the booklet reveals that the pieces are drawn from a much longer suite, concerning interrelated themes that cluster around "blood" as substance and symbol: "health, kinship, identity, race, violence, liquidity, desire." The linkage is felt at an emotional level rather than musically explicit - each piece is self-contained, and only the decision to omit breaks between several tracks hints that they are parts of a whole. But just as Iyer has learned how to pace a performance - for a good example, listen to "Imagined Nations", a bristling dance floor stomp that achieves some superb moments of frenzy without hectoring the listener -Blood Sutra as a whole is carefully structured. Iyer doesn't reveal his hand too early on, so that it only becomes clear over the album's duration how its energies come to converge on the epic "Because of Guns (Hey Joe Redux)", one of the most compelling jazz glosses on Hendrix I've heard, in which Iyer's new line all but pulls the tune apart. Inevitably but nonetheless satisfyingly, the closing "Desiring" is a peaceful coda to the foregoing tumult.Panoptic Modes was good, but withBlood Sutra Iyer's stars are finally in alignment: this is essential listening for followers of contemporary jazz.

Review on AllAboutJazz.com

by Dan McClenaghan
All About Jazz
The pianist is becoming the new standard bearer of the percussive school of playing... Vijay Iyer evolves in fascinating fashion.

Review in Denver Post

by Bret Saunders
Denver Post
"Vijay Iyer's promise as a player and thinker comes to fruition on 'Blood Sutra' (Artists House). The pianist has a knack for making cutting statements without resorting to displays of technical wizardry - he doesn't waste a note. Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa keeps up with Iyer note for note, and the overall feeling here is rejuvenation for outside-leaning music." [Also listed in "Best jazz of 2003" on Dec 14.]

Column in Billboard magazine: "Iyer reveals his different sides on pair of albums"

by Dan Ouellette
Billboard
"New York-based pianist Vijay Iyer dances and pounces on the keys; he swings and swaggers; he plays into pockets of hushed lyricism, then charges with riveting thrusts that bloom into fiery coils of rhythm. Still unknown by most jazz aficionados, Iyer released two new albums Oct. 21... Both sets reveal Iyer's brilliance as a composer and improviser."

Blood Sutra "CD of the Month" in Face Magazine, Maine

by S. D. Feeney
Face Magazine
Though self-taught as a pianist and composer, Vijay Iyer earned a Ph.D in music and cognitive science from U. C. Berkeley. Somehow, that interdisciplinary academic record seems to fit well with the way his music gets inside your head in mysterious and compelling ways. Iyer's latest disc, Blood Sutra (Artists House), picks up on the energy which has connected all his work, whether under his own leadership, that of others or in collective projects like last year's great album by the group Fieldwork. Intense, hard hitting, heavy but, miraculously, not grating, his music swirls and surges with post-bop fire and, yet, inwardness abounds. It's almost scary the way he puts it all together.
Greg Osby and Steve Coleman are obvious reference points for the music of Iyer. Their leanings toward funk, pop and various world music currents are evinced in the upstate New York native's approach as well. Particularly present are the meditative modes of Iyer's ancestral origins in South Asia. He knows something of the Blues as well. "Imagined Nations" is a good example of how Iyer takes off from a Steve Coleman-esque vamp and adds layers of chordal structure and rhythmic variation to take the piece in a direction that listeners soon find makes up a distinctive Iyer sound. The music seeks a higher plain. Like the music of John Coltrane, it's about attaining a state of consciousness above and beyond... well, just above and beyond.
Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, a frequent Iyer collaborator, plays with controlled abandon throughout. He's like a (cleanly) hyped-up bopper whose turf extends to Bombay. Reeling off line after line of amazingly hot improvisations, he's a wonder in himself. The group is rounded out by Stephan Crump on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, the latter a powerful polyrhythmic presence.
Not everything is full tilt on this fine recording. "When History Sleeps" and "Desiring" reveal a delicacy of touch on the part of Iyer that makes me long for more. I haven't even mentioned the quartet's take on "Hey Joe." It's likely to amuse and delight Hendrix fans and might very well serve as a nice encore piece for the group's live shows, which I hope someday soon will include a gig up this way. Good stuff (again) from Iyer!

Reviews in CMJ Weekly

by Tad Hendrickson
CMJ Weekly
[onIn What Language?] An ambitious collaboration between acclaimed pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and literate hip-hop producer Mike Ladd, In What Language is a meditation on the politics of culture and race in this post-9/11 world using airline travel as thematic unifier... Equally jazz and hip-hop, this is a true conversation between diverse but thinking individuals, and nothing was lost in translation.
[Blood Sutra] highlight[s] the strength of his hard-driving, forward-thinking quartet. With formidable saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump and the hard-hitting Tyshawn Sorey on drums, the pianist leads the group through a complex and constantly shifting compositions that are gracefully rendered by a band that's spent time really playing to together. Even better than the critically acclaimedPanoptic Modes,Blood Sutra's angular rhythms and ringing harmonies announce Iyer's arrival as a musical force to be reckoned with.

Downtown Music Gallery double review

by Bruce Gallanter
Downtown Music Gallery
[onIn What Language?]I am reminded of Steve Reich's "Different Trains" with a continuous moving vibe at the center, like a train ride. The four voices take turn describing our journey and making observations about our trip. The music is filled with a continuous, yet evolving set of infectious grooves that seduce us as the words fill us with frustration, resignation and anger at authority figures, those who tell us what to do. Occasionally the mood lightens up a bit and the words/voices become more reflective, the music almost soothing. All in all, this is a provocative treasure chest of highly focused thoughts and sounds, giving us an example of what a successful modern day opera could be. If the word "opera" bothers you, forget that I mentioned it and dig this anyway.
[OnBlood Sutra] "Proximity" is a gorgeous, somber opening for the piano trio, a calm intro before the storm erupts. The quartet leaps into the aptly titled "Brute Facts" with resourceful power, the heavy currents swirling intensely. Rudresh sails high and wide with some of those Steve Coleman-like aggressive sparks, navigating the rapids that the rest Vijay's group provides. Vijay always does an amazing job of balancing a few inter-connected threads simultaneously. His left hand provides the ebb and flow and structure that bass and drums connect with as his right hand weaves lines around the snarling, spirited notes that Rudresh's alto sax spews forth. The quartet turn down the flame on the laid back, yet enchanting "When History Sleeps" which features some marvelous mallet work from Tyshawn and lovely, lyrical solo from Rudresh. Tyshawn is the new drummer in town to watch out for... The quartet sounds as if they are on fire, just incredible... This is another wonderful effort from Vijay Iyer and his magnificent quartet.

Preview in digitalcity.com for performance at Painted Bride / Philadelphia

by Nathaniel Friedman
Digital City Philadelphia
"There are few musicians in jazz today as original -- or as wholly refreshing -- as Vijay Iyer... Mixing postmodern blues and funk, John Cage-ish avant-garde, obscure pianists like Andrew Hill and Herbie Nichols, and a wildly inclusive internationalism, Iyer might seem like just a musical potpourri. But what's most impressive about this up-and-coming innovator... is the seamlessness with which he pulls it off. Iyer isn't the first to draw on such a wild array of elements. But as the moody forthrightness of 'Blood Sutra' proves, he's one of the few to do it so convincingly and honestly."

Review ofBlood Sutra

by Bettina Swigger
Colorado Springs Independent
For the last few years, critics have said nothing but good things about this up-and-coming jazz pianist and composer. But, as many jazz listeners know, that doesn't mean the music is an easy listen. On the contrary, 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 unique percussive style is reminiscent of new music compositions (George Crumb comes to mind), with complicated rhythmic patterns and nearly constant dissonant chord modulations. But Iyer alone does not make this record -- the frantic free-jazz arpeggios of alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and the nearly cacophonous syncopations of drummer Tyshawn Sorey provide the edginess that shows that Iyer's compositions are indeed moving jazz in a new direction.

Review of "In What Language?" at the TBA Festival, Portland, OR

by D. K. Row
The Oregonian
"Will all versions of history please report to the information desk." // That's not one of the new security announcements you'll hear in airports during the John Ashcroft era. But as part of "In What Language?," a multimedia collaboration led by pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and poet Mike Ladd, the command had an appropriate resonance. // Monday's 70-minute performance at the Scottish Rite Center was part of the ongoing Time-Based Art Festival. Billed as "a song cycle of lives in transit," it presented a variety of perspectives on travel and the resultant jostling of personalities and cultures, using the airport as a kind of all-purpose poetic prism. In doing so, it reminded viewers that the messages of history, too, always are in transit, always headed in many directions at once -- and always in danger of being delayed or detained at the gate. // The performance was multi-layered. At the front of the stage, Ladd, the librettist, and three other performers recited poetry by Ladd and other poets from such nations as India, Yemen and Trinidad. Behind them, Iyer led a superb jazz sextet that provided atmospheric and dramatic musical backdrops to the flow of words. Video imagery on a screen across the back of the stage played off theme, setting, mood and rhythm in the words. // The density of content often left too little room for Iyer's thrilling piano playing to shine through. But the lanky Rizwan Mirza was a standout up front, dancing illustratively as he delivered a Muslim New York cabbie's view in "TLC," or expressing the indignation and fear of being under the thumb of globalism and militarism in "Iraqi Businessman." // Episodic and diffuse by its nature, the work may demand more audience effort. But whoever said the information desk was going to sort it all out for us?