Vijay Iyer Quartet @ Sweet Rhythm, March 5 & 6

SWEET RHYTHM, 88 Seventh Avenue South, NYC
Friday, March 5 & Saturday, March 6 sets @ 8pm, 10pm, & 12 midnight
$20 admission/$10 minimum tel: 212. 255.3626

“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... 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 is usually 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..."