...for winning the Downbeat Critic's Poll in the Categories of "Rising Star Jazz Artist" and "Rising Star Jazz Composer."
I've only started listening to him recently, but I can heartily recommend his 2005 release "Reimagining," which in general features dense flurries of solos from the pianist and his frequent collaborator, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa on alto sax, over a kind of ominous, propulsive background by bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. If I have one "project" as a jazz critic/enthusiast, it's to champion people like Iyer, Matthew Shipp, and Andy Milne, who are finding a way to keep the jazz tradition current by inventing new approaches and composing new songs. We can't keep returning to 1938, as great as those classic songs are.
Those who share my weakness for academic pedantry may also want to dip into Iyer's Ph.D. thesis, which focuses on the importance of audience and cultural context for performance in West African and African-American music.
Gotta love academic pedantry. I had no idea Iyer was a Cal grad, let alone that George Lewis, now at Columbia, was an adviser. And Matt Shipp! I've heard him live a handful of times, but most fun was running into him at Downtown Music Gallery a few years ago (the old location), where he nosed around daily.
For more such pedantry, by the way, see Critical Studies in Improvisation-Études critiques en improvisation, out of University of Guelph. (Wouldn't be truly pedantic if I didn't include the full bilingual version of the title.) Full disclosure: I have a contribution buried in the archives of the journal.
Posted by: Dean C. Rowan | August 03, 2007 at 01:40 PM
Whoa, Dean, that's a pretty heavy piece of work, about the political implications of dissonance. I'll look forward to reading it when I'm not working. If anyone else wants to take a look at Dean's work: http://quasar.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/csieci/article/view/10/34
Posted by: Andrew | August 03, 2007 at 05:04 PM
Why do Ph.D theses need to have unintelligible titles like "Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound:Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics"
instead of something like a media sound-bite "Blacks really know how to groove better than any others"?
My Ph.D thesis would be entitled "Propagation of Linguistic Jargon Memes in a Meta-analysis of Cross-disciplinary Studies and Culture Relativism: An Investigation". ;)
Posted by: Sujatha | August 05, 2007 at 06:10 AM
How are musicians like Iyer "keeping the jazz tradition current"? Aren't people tired of navel gazers? Maybe I'm biased as he was my TA at Cal many many years ago and just seemed a bit too pompous in his "fusing." For South Asians who don't neatly fall into the old "hey-I'm-Indian-let's-make-raga-tinged-jazz/imrpov/whatever" bind, check out Tisha Mukarji.
Posted by: Chandan | August 05, 2007 at 10:08 AM
Chandan -- do you really think Iyer's music is raga-tinged? I think you're putting him in an ethnic box of sorts. My appraisal is based solely on Reimagining, but if anything the cultural referents for that record are Downtown 90s figures like Thomas Chapin, Brad Mehldau, and Matthew Shipp, more than the Indian classical tradition. If Iyer was promulgating theories in your class about fusing Indian music with jazz I'd love to hear about it. And the reason I think he's keeping jazz current is because he's writing new, interesting music that builds on the existing tradition but doesn't recycle it. That's what a jazz musician should do.
Posted by: Andrew Rosenblum | August 09, 2007 at 12:08 AM
Also Keith Jarrett's influence is pretty audible as well...
Posted by: Andrew Rosenblum | August 09, 2007 at 12:36 AM