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The Jazz Journalist Association’s 2010 Musician Of The Year, Pianist/Composer VIJAY IYER Releases Solo, His First Solo Piano Album & His Second Release For ACT Music, On August 31, 2010
Follow-Up to His Acclaimed Trio Album, Historicity Features Five Original Compositions
Alongside Thelonious Monk & Duke Ellington Repertory And Covers of Steve Coleman & Michael Jackson.
Vijay Iyer - Low Rez
In the liner notes to Solo, composer-pianist Vijay Iyer notes that making music alone can allow the performer an outside view of his creative process and of the energies that determine its course. Solo is the document of Iyer’s continuing dialogue with history, both his own and that of the music to which he has dedicated his life; it encapsulates both his career and his distinctive approach to his instrument.
In many ways, Vijay Iyer’s career can be seen as a path toward Solo. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Iyer performed and recorded extensively with some of the leading lights of creative music, including M-Base pioneer Steve Coleman, poet/activist Amiri Baraka, and AACM luminaries Wadada Leo Smith and Roscoe Mitchell. More recently he has received justified plaudits for his award-winning trio with Marcus Gilmore and Stephan Crump (who collectively made Historicity the critics’ #1 jazz album of 2009), his innovations with altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa and with the collective Fieldwork, and his excellent forays with Mike Ladd, Talvin Singh, Karsh Kale, DJ Spooky, ETHEL, Burnt Sugar, and many others. And above all, Iyer is rooted in the music of composer-pianists Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Andrew Hill; his unique playing style and intricate compositions owe much to the influence of these masters. Continue reading
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