Vijay Iyer
Web Site
December 2001

Panoptic Modes
Red Giant Records
2001

Reviewed By
Joel Roberts

Architextures
Asian Improv
1998

Reviewed By
Robert Spencer

Dubbed a "rising star" by Time Out New York, Vijay Iyer is a singular talent - a forceful, rhythmic jazz pianist who weds a cutting-edge sensibility to a unique sense for compositional balance. In a recent feature on Mr. Iyer, Village Voice critic Gary Giddins wrote, "he has aligned himself with the percussive school of jazz piano - Ellington, Hines, Monk, Powell, Taylor, Nichols, Weston, Tyner, and the rest - and you can hear the influences at work, but he doesn't sound like any of them. His sound is his own, and you would recognize it in a blindfold test." An exceptional, forward-thinking composer, Mr. Iyer draws from African, Asian, and European musical lineages to create highly original music in the creative jazz tradition. His work manages to be highly emotional and structurally sophisticated at the same time, with exuberant improvisations anchored in cyclical rhythmic structures and ringing harmonies.

The son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Iyer was born and raised in upstate New York, where he started violin lessons at the age of three. Soon he was drawn to his sister's piano, where he began picking out melodies at age six. Entirely self-taught as a pianist and composer, he was lured into jazz in his teens, performing original music with his own groups throughout college. His choice of a professional musical career came rather late, after earning a Masters in physics at age 22. Then, as his musical accomplishments multiplied, he still found time to earn an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in music and cognitive science at U.C. Berkeley in 1998, after which he relocated to the jazz capital, New York City.

In addition to ongoing New York engagements, Mr. Iyer has traveled worldwide as a leader and a sideman, appearing at festivals and concerts in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. He is currently a member of legendary avant-garde pioneer Roscoe Mitchell's nine-piece Note Factory. In addition, he has collaborated extensively with the world-renowned saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman, appearing in countless major performances and on four of Coleman's BMG recordings. Mr. Iyer has also joined forces with cutting-edge artists such as Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Gerry Hemingway, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, kotoist Miya Masaoka, drum & bass diva Imani Uzuri, hip-hop group Midnight Voices, Indian percussionist Trichy Sankaran, and legendary poet Amiri Baraka. As a performer and scholar, Mr. Iyer is the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, Arts International, and the University of California. He frequently gives lectures and workshops on various topics, including improvisation, cognitive science, and the politics of music.

Mr. Iyer has released two critically acclaimed compact discs of original music on Asian Improv Records. The first, Memorophilia, recorded when Iyer was 23 years old, was listed by Cadence magazine editor Bob Rusch as one of the ten best albums of 1996, and by A. Magazine as one of "the 15 most interesting sounds of the decade." His follow-up, Architextures, was hailed as "utterly remarkable" in SonicNet.com's roundup of the ten best jazz records of 2000 (where he was listed alongside Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis), and as "genius... epitomizing new jazz at its best" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His eagerly anticipated third album, Panoptic Modes, is available now. Gary Giddins already writes in the Village Voice that it "whets the appetite for his fourth," and SonicNet.com describes it as "boldly shaping the direction of jazz to come."