Artist Bios
Featuring Vijay Iyer: MacArthur Genius Fellow, Harvard Music Professor and Grammy nominated jazz pianist with the award-winning Brentano String Quartet of the Yale School of Music. Best known as a jazz pianist, Iyer has released 17 albums, and in 2012 was named jazz artist of the year by Down Beat magazine. The New Yorker dubbed him “extravagantly gifted” and “brilliantly eclectic.” In the work titled “Time, Place, Action,” stylistically speaking, Iyer draws on everything from hard-bop jazz, to Indian ragas and Western classical music. For that reason, some people might say that he’s all about blending musical styles, but Iyer counters: “It’s not about styles or genres, it’s about communities – because that’s where styles come from. My music comes from real-life connections with real people.”
The Debussy Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
mouvementé et avec passion
Brentano String Quartet
Vijay Iyer piano solo
Intermission
Vijay Iyer “Time, Place, Action”
for Piano Quintet
In Memory of Imamu Amiri Baraka
“Time, Place, Action” was commissioned jointly
by Da Camera (Houston, TX), 92Y (New York, NY),
Chamber Music Society of Detroit, and San Francisco Performances,
for the Brentano Quartet and Vijay Iyer. The world premiere
was performed on February 15, 2013 in Houston, TX.
Time – appox. 33 minutes
Vijay Iyer, piano and Brentano String Quartet
Vijay Iyer isn’t a musician who can be easily defined. The 42-year-old from Rochester, N.Y., is best known as a jazz pianist. He has released 17 albums, and in 2012 he was named jazz artist of the year by Down Beat magazine. The New Yorker dubbed him “extravagantly gifted” and “brilliantly eclectic.”But Iyer also is a producer, a bandleader and a composer. As if that weren’t enough, he holds a doctorate in music cognition. In 2013, he received a MacArthur Fellowship (a so-called “genius” grant) for his scholarly work, and in January he took on a new gig as professor at Harvard University.
The work titled “Time, Place, Action,” stylistically speaking, Iyer draws on everything from hard-bop jazz, to Indian ragas and Western classical music. For that reason, some people might say that he’s all about blending musical styles. But Iyer wouldn’t be one of those people.
“To me,” he explains from his home in New York, “it’s not about styles or genres, it’s about communities – because that’s where styles come from. My music comes from real-life connections with real people. It’s not just about what’s on my iPod.”
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