Vijay Iyer Trio - Live 2024

Composer and pianist Vijay Iyer has forged a unique path as an influential, ever-changing presence in 21st century music. His deeply interactive and powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the tradition of composers and pianists ranging from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, as well as the creative music movement of the '60s and '70s and the rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently noted, "interweaving composition and improvisation is rightly his most celebrated métier." He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international awards, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and musicians from around the world. But perhaps Iyer's artistry finds its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised as "truly amazing" by NPR and "one of the best bands in jazz" by The New York Times.

Iyer's ever-evolving trio concept, which he has developed over the past 30 years, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit meeting Money Jungle, Andrew Hill's Smokestack, McCoy Tyner's 1970s ensembles, the rhythm sections of James Brown, Fela Kuti and The Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms and the expressive nuance of chamber music. Over the course of his trio's five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, the results have not only transcended the old categories, but introduced entirely new ones.