WDCB Welcomes and Sound Culture Presents: Vijay Iyer Trio

Grammy-nominated composer-pianist VIJAY IYER (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) was described by Pitchfork as "one of the most interesting and vital young pianists in jazz today," by The New Yorker as one of "today's most important pianists… extravagantly gifted… brilliantly eclectic," and by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star.” His most recent honors include an unprecedented “quintuplecrown” in the Down Beat International Critics Poll (winning Jazz Artist of the Year, Pianist of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year, Jazz Group of the Year, and Rising Star Composer categories), as well as the $275,000 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and the $30,000 Greenfield Prize, all awarded in 2012. He was voted the 2010 Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, and named one of the “50 Most Influential Global Indians” by GQ India. Iyer has released sixteen albums as a leader; his most recent, Accelerando (2012), an “early front-runner for jazz album of the year” (The New York Times), is an intense, visceral, and widely acclaimed follow-up to the multipleaward-winning Historicity (2009), both featuring the Vijay Iyer Trio (Iyer, piano; Marcus Gilmore, drums; Stephan Crump, bass). Historicity was a 2010 Grammy Nominee for Best Instrumental Jazz Album, and was named #1 Jazz Album of the Year in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Metro Times, National Public Radio, PopMatters.com, the Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll, and the Downbeat International Critics Poll. The trio won the 2010 Echo Award (the "German Grammy") for best international ensemble and the 2012 Downbeat Critics Poll for jazz group of the year. Iyer’s many other honors include the Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous composer commissions.

Iyer’s many collaborators include his generation’s fellow forward-thinkers Rudresh Mahanthappa, Rez Abbasi, Craig Taborn, Ambrose Akinmusire, Liberty Ellman, Steve Lehman and Tyshawn Sorey; elder creative musicpioneers such as Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris, George Lewis, and Amina Claudine Myers; new-music experimenters Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, and John Zorn; hip-hop innovators Dead Prez, Das Racist, DJ Spooky, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium; South Asian percussionist-producers Karsh Kale, Suphala, and Talvin Singh; filmmakers Haile Gerima and Bill Morrison; choreographer Karole Armitage; and poets Mike Ladd, Amiri Baraka, Charles Simic, and Robert Pinsky. His compositions have been commissioned or performed by The Silk Road Ensemble, Ethel, Brentano String Quartet, JACK Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Hermès Ensemble, and Imani Winds. A polymath whose career has spanned the sciences, the humanities and the arts, Iyer received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the cognitive science of music from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published articles in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Wire, Music Perception, JazzTimes, and The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010. In 2013, he will become Director of Banff Centre’s International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, an annual 3-week program in Alberta, Canada founded by piano legend Oscar Peterson.

“Presto! Here is the great new jazz piano trio." - The New York Times

“one of the world’s most inventive new-generation jazz pianists” – Guardian (UK)

“Vijay Iyer, an American treasure” – Minnesota Public Radio

"The Vijay Iyer Trio has the potential to alter the scope, ambition and language of jazz piano forever." - Jazzwise (UK)

"one of the best in the world at what he does" - Pitchfork