Vijay Iyer
Encyclopedia
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, electronic musician, and writer based in New York City.
Biography
Born in 1971 and raised in RochesterRochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Vijay Iyer is the son of Indian
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...
immigrants to the US. He received 15 years of Western classical training on violin beginning at the age of 3. He began playing the piano by ear in his childhood, and is mostly self-taught on that instrument. Vijay was also exposed to some Carnatic
Carnatic music
Carnatic music is a system of music commonly associated with the southern part of the Indian subcontinent, with its area roughly confined to four modern states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu...
classical and religious music in his youth. His high school years saw a growing interest in jazz. After completing an undergraduate degree in mathematics and physics at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
when he was 20, Iyer then went to the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
to do a Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts. His 1998 dissertation was titled Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics. Vijay continued to pursue his jazz interests and served as the house pianist in jam sessions at the Bird Kage, a famous club in North Oakland, which featured some of the best local musicians such as Ed Kelly and Smily Winters, as well as guest luminaries such as Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award–winning American jazz saxophonist.Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on...
. This greatly enriched his understanding of the jazz idiom and the lived jazz experience. In an interview with A Shuman (April, 1997), Iyer states "I found that the music we were playing was a profound expression of their lives, and the lives of the audience members as well."
Now a New York based jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
pianist, composer, and producer, he performs around the world with his various ensembles and collaborations, including his trio, quartet, and quintet; his large-scale works with poet-performer Mike Ladd
Mike Ladd
Mike Ladd is a hip-hop MC and producer. As an MC, he practices spoken-word and is known for his poetic lyrics. As a producer, he is known as the owner of the Likemadd label.-Biography:...
; the experimental collective Fieldwork; the new South Asian chamber trio Tirtha; and Raw Materials, his longstanding duo with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa
Rudresh Mahanthappa
Rudresh Mahanthappa is a New York-based jazz alto saxophonist and composer.Mahanthappa was born in Trieste, Italy, and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1992 and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in jazz composition from Chicago's DePaul University...
. In 2003, he collaborated with Mike Ladd
Mike Ladd
Mike Ladd is a hip-hop MC and producer. As an MC, he practices spoken-word and is known for his poetic lyrics. As a producer, he is known as the owner of the Likemadd label.-Biography:...
, hip-hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
MC
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
and producer
Hip hop production
Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music. Though the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music, it's most commonly used to refer to the instrumental, non-lyrical aspects of hip hop. This means that hip hop producers are the instrumentalists involved in a work...
on "In What Language?", a song cycle about the post-9/11 world. His orchestral work Interventions was commissioned and premiered in 2007 by the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
, and his oratorio with Ladd, Still Life with Commentator, was commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
for its 2006 Next Wave Festival.
Iyer received the 2003 Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2006 Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Cary Charitable Trust, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, and Meet The Composer. His trio album Historicity was nominated for a 2010 Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Album.
He has worked with Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
, Steve Coleman
Steve Coleman
Steve Coleman, born , is an African American saxophone player, spontaneous composer, composer and band leader. His music and concepts have been a heavy influence on contemporary jazz.-Chicago:...
, Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell is an African American composer, jazz instrumentalist and educator, mostly known for being "a technically superb—if idiosyncratic—saxophonist." He has been called "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz who has been "at the forefront of modern music" for the past...
, Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith
Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is a trumpeter and composer working primarily in the fields of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation.-Biography:...
, dead prez
Dead Prez
Dead Prez stylized as dead prez is a hip hop duo from the United States, composed of stic.man and M-1, formed in 1996 in New York City, New York. They are known for their confrontational style, combined with socialist lyrics focused on both militant social justice and Pan-Africanism...
, Amina Claudine Myers
Amina Claudine Myers
Amina Claudine Myers in Blackwell, Arkansas; is an American jazz pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, and musical arranger.-Biography:...
, Butch Morris
Butch Morris
Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is an American jazz cornetist, composer and conductor.-Biography:Before his musical career, Morris served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War....
, George E. Lewis, Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka is an American musician and composer who performs on the 17-string Japanese koto zither, often augmenting it with string preparations and electronic triggers...
, Trichy Sankaran
Trichy Sankaran
Trichy Sankaran is an Indian percussionist, composer, scholar, and educator. He is acknowledged as one of the foremost virtuosos of the mridangam and also plays the kanjira on occasion. Since the early 1970s, he has performed and recorded in a number of cross-cultural projects.Sankaran has lived...
, Pamela Z
Pamela Z
Pamela Z is an American composer, performer, and audio artist who works primarily with her voice and live electronic processing.-Music career:...
, Burnt Sugar, Karsh Kale
Karsh Kale
Karsh Kale is an Indian American musician, producer and composer, and is considered one of the pioneering figures in defining the Asian Underground genre by mixing disparate genres of music such as Indian classical and folk with electronica, rock, pop and ambient music...
, Tyshawn Sorey
Tyshawn Sorey
Tyshawn Sorey is an American musician and composer who plays drum set, percussion, trombone and piano.Since graduating from William Paterson University, Sorey has been a sought-after musician in many different musical idioms...
, Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and poet. He is known mainly on alto saxophone but also performs on soprano saxophone and flute....
, DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
, Das Racist
Das Racist
Das Racist is an alternative hip hop group based in Brooklyn, New York City, composed of MCs Himanshu Suri , and Victor Vazquez and hype man Ashok Kondabolu...
, Ethel, Imani Winds, Bill Morrison, and many others. Iyer holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Yale College
Yale College
Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...
, and a Masters in Physics and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
He is a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music
Manhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
, New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
, and the School for Improvisational Music. His writings appear in Music Perception, Current Musicology, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Journal of the Society for American Music, JazzTimes, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture, Arcana IV, and The Best Writing on Mathematics 2010. He is a Steinway
Steinway & Sons
Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway , is an American and German manufacturer of handmade pianos, founded 1853 in Manhattan in New York City by German immigrant Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg...
artist.
As leader
- Memorophilia (1996, Asian Improv Records)
- Architextures (1998, Asian Improv / Red Giant Records)
- Panoptic Modes (2001, Red Giant Records)
- Your Life Flashes (2002, Pi Recordings) (as the trio Fieldwork)
- In What Language? (2003, Pi Recordings) (with Mike LaddMike LaddMike Ladd is a hip-hop MC and producer. As an MC, he practices spoken-word and is known for his poetic lyrics. As a producer, he is known as the owner of the Likemadd label.-Biography:...
) - Blood Sutra (2003, Artist House)
- Reimagining (2005, Savoy Jazz)
- Simulated Progress (2005, Pi Recordings) (as the trio Fieldwork)
- Raw Materials (2006, Savoy Jazz) (with Rudresh MahanthappaRudresh MahanthappaRudresh Mahanthappa is a New York-based jazz alto saxophonist and composer.Mahanthappa was born in Trieste, Italy, and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1992 and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in jazz composition from Chicago's DePaul University...
) - Still Life with Commentator (2007, Savoy) (with Mike LaddMike LaddMike Ladd is a hip-hop MC and producer. As an MC, he practices spoken-word and is known for his poetic lyrics. As a producer, he is known as the owner of the Likemadd label.-Biography:...
) - Door (2008, Pi Recordings) (as the trio Fieldwork)
- Tragicomic (2008, Sunnyside)
- Historicity (2009, ACT Music + Vision)
- Solo (2010, ACT Music + Vision)
- Tirtha (2011, ACT Music + Vision)
Compilations
- Mendi + Keith ObadikeMendi & Keith ObadikeMendi Obadike and Keith Obadike are a married Igbo Nigerian American couple who create music and art. They were both born in 1973. Their music, live art, and conceptual Internet artworks have been exhibited internationally. Mendi is a poet and Keith is a composer and sound designer...
present Crosstalk: American Speech MusicCrosstalk: American Speech MusicCrosstalk: American Speech Music is a compilation album of speech-based music by various composers, poets, visual artists and DJs.- Track listing :# "Declaratives in First Person" – 5:04# "Electroprayer 5.0" Crosstalk: American Speech Music is a compilation album of speech-based music by various...
(various artists), (2008, Bridge Records) - Juncture (2004, Pi Recordings)
External links
- Center for New Music and Audio Technologies
- Radio Interview on This Week in ScienceThis Week in ScienceThis Week in Science is a science radio talk show broadcasting from KDVS 90.3FM on the UC Davis campus. Each week, TWIS founder/host Kirsten Sanford and co-host Justin Jackson review current research in technology...
Nov 21, 2006 Broadcast - "In Conversation with Vijay Iyer" by Tom Greenland (Jazz.com)
- Vijay Iyer at Pi RecordingsPi RecordingsPi Recordings is a jazz record label whose motto is "dedicated to the innovative". Pi was founded in 2001 by Seth Rosner. He was joined as partner by Yulun Wang in 2002.- Discography :*Pi 01: Everybodys Mouth's a Book - Henry Threadgill...
- "The Sound of Discovery: Conversation with Vijay Iyer" State of Mind - January 2011 (StateofMindMusic.com)
- "A Night with Vijay Iyer at UC Davis’s Mondavi Center" A Review by Seth Katz for nthWORD Magazine - February 9th, 2011 (nthWORD.com)
- Official site