Vijay Iyer

The piano trio is a central configuration in the history of jazz, not only on its own but also as the anchor and center of gravity for many larger groups.

The so-called "rhythm section" backs, propels, supports, and is oftentimes the engine of the music and the wellspring that improvisation pours forth from. That's not to say it has primacy over other elements and participants of the music, but there is something essential about its alchemy and the ways in which piano, bass, and drums interlock, the dovetail joint (or maybe the tongue and groove?) of jazz.

Vijay Iyer has certainly done his time in various other configurations in live and recorded settings before embarking on the path of the trio, but here finds himself left to the intricacies and specifics of the trio.

His first two albums, Memorophilia and Architextures each feature about half trio tracks, with the rest including additional musicians. Since then he's primarily worked in a quartet setting, with other outings including his work with Mike Ladd.

Historicity finds him back in the trio setting, this time without qualification or guest artists. That his playing has changed since his first two releases should come as no surprise, however in looking back his playing now encompasses a lot of the compositional complexity that was heard in his earlier writing for larger ensembles.

His rapport with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore has reached a serene level of fluidity and communication that is the goal of any working ensemble, and the arrangements and improvisations breathe with an assured ease.

The album contains 4 originals and 6 interpretations of others' work, a broad swath of artists from Stevie Wonder to Andrew Hill, Ronnie Foster to Julius Hemphill, MIA to Leonard Bernstein. While the material varies widely in origin the playing of all them is anchored by a strongly rhythmic approach that never wavers - I've always felt Iyer's playing had a strongly percussive element and it is showcased throughout.

That's not to say that melodies aren't featured, but to my ears they're given more equal footing with harmonic and rhythmic considerations. On the cover of MIA's Galang, the rhythmic essence of the song is distilled down to its component parts and then recast with embellishments and bombast, all of it driven by the seemingly endless rhythmic inventiveness of Marcus Gilmore. His snare sounds like its either treated differently than on the rest of the album or maybe layered or replaced by a MIDI triggered sampled snare, and the way he creates and breaks down aspects of what I'd call "momentum" in his playing borders on the mind boggling.

That jazz has a long tradition of interpreting popular music is no secret, but the methodology for doing so has changed over time, and here we can see a fully formed example of what a modern approach. When the popular song was largely a melodic beast, it made sense to recast melodies to shine a light on their slope and texture, to lay them bare without words. Given the immediacy and importance of rhythm in hip-hop, or whatever you'd like to call the eclectic music of MIA, different elements deserve to undergo that process of focus and embellishment.

Along those lines, the covers of songs that could broadly be called "pop" music such as Somewhere, Big Brother, and Mystic Brew, bring all the elements of the song to a level playing field rather than just rehashing the melodic elements. I like to think of the work Iyer is doing here as a re-balancing of the elements of music, and at any time if you hone in on a given area or part, you'll hear it shining without being subservient to another element.

It's a difficult quality to describe but I think it relates to treating each individual component of the trio equally in how each musician participates in every element of the song. Every nook and cranny of texture and feel that can be squeezed out of this trio is found.

There are those rare albums where an artist exceeds all expectations you have based on a love for their previous work. Historicity is one of those albums.

Vijay Iyer’s Tragicomic opens with an invocation entitled The Weight of Things, an evocative title and opening to the album to my mind and ears. There’s a series of titles about things amongst musicians I admire:  Evidence of Things Unseen by Don Pullen, The Flow of Things by Roscoe Mitchell, Things to Come From Those Now Gone by Muhal Richard Abrams, to name a few. Maybe I’m reading too much into these things, but I see a connected interest in the ineffable amongst all these artists, and a similar view of expressing these things through music.

Now that I’ve already gone and described the opening track as evocative, I’ll go ahead and apply the label to the whole album. Isn’t all good music evocative in some sense? Perhaps, but this music falls into a category of evocation that I deem particularly noteworthy.  Tragicomic finds Vijay Iyer splitting time between his established quartet and a more stripped down setting of the trio, and there is even one track treating the listener to a solo piano excursion that is so enjoyable that I hope Vijay will consider recording an album of solo piano at some point. 

I did something with Tragicomic that I like to do if I’m afforded the luxury of time - listen to the artist’s recordings leading up to the newest (this is just his music under his own name as a leader, not including collaborative efforts such as Fieldwork). Following the progression of Mr. Iyer’s work throughout his career, I am definitely hearing a honing of process and compositional voice. It’s difficult to describe, but amounts to an identifying of some kind of essential string of musical voice that you can easily hear throughout that becomes more prominent in improvisations and composition as time goes on.

There is an aesthetic in Vijay Iyer’s music that I’d described as eclectic unity, the incorporation of seemingly disparate elements rhythmically, melodically or harmonically that make sense in the context of the whole. We hear hints of reggae in Comin’ Up both in feel and in a subtle delay (a production technique that recurs a few times on the album with great success to my ears) on the snare drum at a dub like break, a confident sense of swing in his solo piano excursion, and a whole lot more that isn’t easily labeled. 

An accepted fact to my ears when listening to and parsing Vijay Iyer’s music is that rhythm is always a centrally propulsive element in the music.  Propulsive not always in the sense of frenetic or pushed, but more in a sense of centrality in its role in the music as a whole. Even in Mehndi, the brooding meditative piece that places the listener awash in the ceremonial dye of its namesake, the rhythmic feel and pulse is very precise and most of all purposeful. In this realm of rhythmic prowess, no genre is off limits, and new genres are formed through rhythmic alchemy.

Tragicomic is a great album. Vijay Iyer has continued to hone his musical vision and it is fully formed on this release. To speculate a bit, I hear a point of inflection with this album that I think is going to lead to new and different things in future releases with this or other bands. The concept and vision is there and now the question is what will he do with it next?

Progress in music requires progress in our methodologies in writing about music. Certain vocabularies and methods of comparison that were adequate for writing about jazz in the past are no longer efficacious, or desirable.

For one thing, the notion of linear progress and progression in so-called jazz music has been a myth for some time now, as long as 50 plus years depending on who you ask. As the field of influence for improvising musicians continued to widen over time, it made less and less sense to insist upon clear lineages and predecessors. All of this is worth mentioning as an introduction to a review of Fieldwork's new album Door, because the music doesn't fit neatly into any preconceived box or precedent, so we have to approach it with a right understanding of methodology in order to convey at least some of its essence.

Fieldwork has had more than one lineup, but as of this writing, the lineup is Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, and Tyshawn Sorey. The previous two albums have only Vijay Iyer in common, and the previous release has both Lehman and Iyer - to my ears and understanding, Sorey is a natural progression and fit for the band and its concept, and I hope this lineup stays intact for future efforts. Door's street date is April 22nd, the same day as Vijay Iyer's new quartet record, Tragicomic, and Fieldwork is scheduled to play an album release show at Joe's Pub on May 31st.

Door is a truly collaborative effort, with each musician contributing compositions: six by Tyshawn Sorey, three by Vijay Iyer and two by Steve Lehman. The group feel is emphasized no matter the composer, with each musician sharing rhythmic and melodic duties and layered interplay that defies the basic traditional roles if each member's instrument. Sorey and Iyer have a particularly strong rhythmic connection and rapport throughout, with some incredibly tight and telepathic improvisatory passages. As I've come to expect from a certain group of musicians, the line between improvisation and composition is blurred throughout Door, reflecting a strong affinity with processual predecessors in the AACM and elsewhere.

It's interesting to note that given the change in lineups for all three of Fieldwork's albums, this recording sounds like a logical continuation of the band's ethos from the past two records. Sorey leaves a distinct mark on the album, both compositionally and with his incredible musicianship. Given Sorey's take-no-prisoners chops and abilities to tackle any rhythm or polyrhythm, his own compositions downplay his own instrumental abilities in favor of examining permutations of themes, and a more minimalist angle than both Iyer and Lehman's writing. Sorey lays down some positively sinister beats and fills throughout the album, summoning John Bonham as often as any other easily identifiable influence. Although I haven't heard it myself, I'm told that the writing here is consistent with what Sorey did on his first solo album That/Not, a record that I really need to pick up after hearing his compositions on Door.

I'll tell you what Fieldwork is not: it's not your grandpa's jazz, it's not free improvisation, it's not a postmodern hodgepodge or pastiche, and it's not light listening. It's much more difficult to say what exactly it is. It certainly reflects the unique musicality of the three participants, and the singular alchemy that occurs when the three of them come together. There is no shortage of risks taken, and the music reflects this with occasionally thrilling results. The end product is diverse but coherent, varied but focused. It certainly sounds like the vanguard of the music that I pay attention to, and as such it should come as no surprise that it's on Pi Recordings, a label that continues to put out the most consistently interesting music of any label I can think of.

This is very challenging music - it's an album that in my multiple listens required undivided attention to get a feel for what was going on musically. If that kind of affair is your bag, then you will find Door a highly rewarding collection of music.