Vijay Iyer 

About

“[one of] today’s most important pianists… extravagantly gifted” – The New Yorker

Described by the New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last twenty-five years, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation.

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, the Alpert Award in the Arts, and two German “Echo” awards, and was voted Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times in the last decade. He has been praised by Pitchfork as “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.”

Iyer’s musical language is grounded in the rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa, the African American creative music movement of the 1960s and 70s, and the lineage of composer-pianists from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen. He has released twenty-four albums of his music, most recently 2021’s UnEasy,  a trio session with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; 2019’s The Transitory Poems, a live duo recording with pianist Craig Taborn; 2017’s Far From Over with the award-winning Vijay Iyer Sextet; and 2016’s A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke, a suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.