VIJAY IYER

Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently observed, “twining composition and improvisation is rightfully his most celebrated métier.” He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and music-makers from across the planet.

Iyer’s artistry finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.” Iyer’s ever-evolving trio conception, developed over the last 30 years, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle, Andrew Hill’s Smokestack, McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles, the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, Fela Kuti, and the Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms, and the expressive nuance of chamber music. The results, over the span of his trio’s five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, have not only defied the old categories, but inaugurated entirely new ones.

The Trio: Piano: Vijay Iyer | Bass: Harish Raghavan | Drums: Jeremy Dutton