Upcoming Events
2012 has been a remarkable year for Vijay Iyer. In an unprecedented series of wins, Iyer received top honors in five categories of the 2012 Down Beat International Critics Poll, including Jazz Artist of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year (for Accelerando), Jazz Group of the Year (for the Vijay Iyer Trio), Pianist of the Year and Rising Star Composer. No other artist in the sixty-year history of the magazine’s poll has ever taken five titles simultaneously. A few days earlier, the Jazz Journalists Association voted Iyer Pianist of the Year in the 2012 Jazz Awards. Earlier in 2012, he won two major arts prizes: the Doris Duke Artist Award, and the Greenfield Prize.
On this very special evening, Iyer will explore his vision in three contexts. His trio, featuring Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, starts out the evening, pushing the classic combo configuration to entirely new territories. The legendarily and influential alto-saxophonist Steve Coleman joins the trio in the second set for a rare guest appearance. Finally Vijay’s new sextet, featuring the core trio plus Coleman, with the addition of Graham Haynes on trumpet and cornet, and Mark Shim on tenor sax, will close out the evening.
The sonic impact of Coleman’s playing cannot be understated. For more than four decades, he has pushed the concept of jazz in ways few others have. With more than 20 records as leader and as part of the visionary collective of composers known as M-Base, Coleman remains a vital part of the exploratory, improvised sound that is contemporary jazz. As Iyer puts it: “To me, Steve is as important as Coltrane. He has contributed an equal amount to the history of the music. He deserves to be placed in the pantheon of pioneering artists. It's hard to overstate Steve’s influence. He's affected more than one generation, as much as anyone since John Coltrane. It's not just that you can connect the dots by playing seven or eleven beats. What sits behind his influence is this global perspective on music and life. He has a point of view of what he does and why he does it."
This extraordinary evening with Vijay Iyer, Steve Coleman and their incomparable cohorts will be talked about for years to come.