Vijay Iyer: New Yorker profile

[Mark Stryker]

First, Kamasi Washington in the New York Times Magazine. Now Vijay Iyer in the New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/time-is-a-ghost 

Attention is good.

 

 

[jlhoots]

Nice.

I'll look forward to the Iyer / Wadada collaboration.

[paul secor]

We subscribe to The New Yorker, but my wife pays much more attention to it than I do. I probably would have skipped reading this article, except a friend emailed me, saying that he had read it and had some negative comments about it. So, I decided to read it and make my own judgment. (I should start by saying that from what I've heard of Vijay Iyer's music, he strikes me as a somewhat competent musician, though I probably wouldn't cross the street to hear him play live.) I hadn't gotten far into the article when I came across: "Lately, Iyer, who is forty-four and a Harvard professor, has been the most lauded piano player in jazz." That raised an eyebrow. (And would The New Yorker refer to a classical musician as a "piano player"?)

In  the same paragraph: "... the critic Steve Greenlee wrote, 'He may be the most celebrated musician in jazz." That raised two eyebrows, and would have raised more if I had them.  I have no idea who Steve Greenlee is, but he must reside in a different universe than the one I inhabit.

If The New Yorker decides to profile Sonny Rollins (it might be a good idea to try and make up for the "humorous" phony interview they published), Cecil Taylor, Lee Konitz, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp, or any other musician more worthy than Vijay Iyer; and if they assign a decent writer to do so, I may pay attention to what they publish about music.

I probably can't completely fault The New Yorker for publishing this article. Given their backgrounds, a musician who comes from a family of scientists, who graduated from Yale, who has a PHD, and who is a professor at Harvard, is probably someone with whom the editors and writers at The New Yorker can identify with. (Although I believe that Roswell Rudd did graduate from Yale.)

[Mark Stryker]

Leaving aside value judgments about Iyer's music, who is worthy of coverage in the New Yorker and whether this particular piece is good nor not:

I don't see anything objectively wrong with the statement that Iyer has been the most lauded piano player in jazz in recent years and Greenlee's quote is defensible by a  number of objective standards. In 2015, the Down Beat Critic's Poll named Iyer the Jazz Artist of the Year and his trio as Jazz Group of the Year. In 2012 Iyer won five categories in the DB Critic's Poll, including Jazz Artist of the Year and top Jazz Album. In 2014 he was the DB critic's pianist of the year. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 and a Doris Duke Fellowship the year before. His records are perennials in the annual NPR Jazz Critic's Poll, typically appearing in the top 10, sometimes at No. 1. Not sure of the specifics of his showing in Jazz Journalist Association Awards. I'd be hard pressed to think of anyone in jazz who has gotten more media attention across the board, from the New York Times and NPR on down, than Iyer has in the last five years.

Sonny Rollins was profiled in the New Yorker in 2005 by Stanley Crouch. If you're a subscriber, you can read it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/05/09/the-colossus-2

Edited January 29, 2016 by Mark Stryker

[Hot Ptah]

I have seen Iyer live, and heard several of his CDs. I think he is an excellent composer and pianist, and that he has an original approach which is very interesting and thought provoking. I think he is easily artistically worthy of a New Yorker piece, all other factors notwithstanding. If there are some statements in the article which seem slightly overblown, I think that is in the grand old tradition of magazine article writing. I don't really understand why this would be controversial.

[jlhoots]

I have heard him live several times & he was just fine. Most of his CDs are very good also IMHO.

BTW, he's much more interesting to me than the much lauded & touted Kamasi, who bores me.

Edited January 29, 2016 by jlhoots

[Hot Ptah]

I agree that he is on a high level of artistry. Iyer would have been lauded if he had begun his career in the early 1970s

[JSngry]

Whatever happened to Anthony Davis?

But seriosly, Iyler is OK with me. He's not really "loose", but ok, he gets a slice of pie, not the whole thing.

As with the Steve Coleman thing from recently ago, kudos to anybody whose peeps is getting them this level of push. If it's the Pi Records folks, then ok, that will be that, and what of it then?

[Hot Ptah]

I also wonder about Amhonu Davis.

it puzzles me why it would be a bad thing if an article is published about a jazz artist.

 

[paul secor]

15 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Leaving aside value judgments about Iyer's music, who is worthy of coverage in the New Yorker and whether this particular piece is good nor not:

I don't see anything objectively wrong with the statement that Iyer has been the most lauded piano player in jazz in recent years and Greenlee's quote is defensible by a  number of objective standards. In 2015, the Down Beat Critic's Poll named Iyer the Jazz Artist of the Year and his trio as Jazz Group of the Year. In 2012 Iyer won five categories in the DB Critic's Poll, including Jazz Artist of the Year and top Jazz Album. In 2014 he was the DB critic's pianist of the year. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 and a Doris Duke Fellowship the year before. His records are perennials in the annual NPR Jazz Critic's Poll, typically appearing in the top 10, sometimes at No. 1. Not sure of the specifics of his showing in Jazz Journalist Association Awards. I'd be hard pressed to think of anyone in jazz who has gotten more media attention across the board, from the New York Times and NPR on down, than Iyer has in the last five years.

Sonny Rollins was profiled in the New Yorker in 2005 by Stanley Crouch. If you're a subscriber, you can read it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/05/09/the-colossus-2

I had no idea of the awards and recognition that Iyer had received. I guess it took a jazz critic to put me wise. Seeing the recognition he's gotten makes me realize why I don't read Down Beat (or any other jazz magazine) and reinforces my opinion of how watered down the music has become and how pointless most jazz "criticism" has become. But those are just my personal opinions, as are my feelings about some of the MacArthur fellowships. But, as I've said before, it's their money, not mine, and they're entitled to do as they wish with it.

Anyway, thanks for setting me straight about "the most lauded piano player in jazz". I guess it comes down to who's doing the lauding.

One parting shot:

Iyer received his Ph.D. in 1998. His dissertation is "Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics.". ...  Ingrid Monson, a professor of ethnomusicology at Harvard, said...that "Vijay's dissertation was one of the first to talk about embodied cognition. It foreshadowed the development of a now prominent direction in musical studies, called 'embodiment studies.' The field is less interested in scores and musical theory and more in the cognitive and embodied underpinnings of music."

Reading that made me glad that I'm not an academic. At least Iyer made the comment that he regards his Ph.D. "as a hustle".

Edited January 29, 2016 by paul secor

[Hot Ptah]

It's difficult to imagine Ben Webster being interested in the cognitive and embodied underpinnings of music.

[paul secor]

1 hour ago, Hot Ptah said:

It's difficult to imagine Ben Webster being interested in the cognitive and embodied underpinnings of music.

[JSngry]

Ben was more than interested in it, he explified it.

But Ben is dead, and so is the world that created him.

[paul secor]

34 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Ben was more than interested in it, he explified it.

But Ben is dead, and so is the world that created him.

"explified" ????  Is that another academic term?

[king ubu]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

But Ben is dead, and so is the world that created him.

Yeah. Different times, different musics, different musicians, different approaches -- if you (not as in: "you, Mr. Sangrey"!) want to make value judgements about this, better do your homework or you risk coming across as pretty opinionated.

Fact: that someone can be a member of this board for a decade and not be aware of Vijay Iyer also says something about this very board of course.

This is one of those "jazz in print"-topics that can drag you down if you don't watch out ... not that I'm the biggest Iyer fan, far from really, saw his trio live, saw him in duo with Rudresh Mahanthappa - and no, Iyer is definitely not "loose" in many ways. But his most recent trio album (ugh, it's on ECM! ) got me interested again, I enjoy it quite some, no matter if it turns to 20c classical music or to Robert Hood. Not sure if Iyer is on the way to get over the "learned" thing (that is probably connected to the "not loose" thing in some respects) or not, but I guess I'll keep watching - and listening - with some interest.

[paul secor]

58 minutes ago, king ubu said:

Fact: that someone can be a member of this board for a decade and not be aware of Vijay Iyer also says something about this very board of course.

I don't know if that part of your post was intended for me. If it was, I can only say that I have heard of Vijay Iyer for some years, have heard his music here and there and haven't been at all impressed. I was unaware of the Down Beat awards and the NPR critics poll awards that he's won. To me, those things are meaningless and I don't pay any attention to them. If they're meaningful for some people, that's fine for them. And I guess I can be opinionated. Better that than just accepting whatever is offered up with no thought given to what it might be, at least afaic.

If the quoted part of the post wasn't intended for me, please ignore all of the above.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, paul secor said:

"explified" ????  Is that another academic term?

No, thatI can't type for shit on a cell phone error. Should have been exemplified.

[Larry Kart]

I thought that "explified" was taken from Babs Gonzales or Slim Gaillard and that it meant how you felt after drinking a fifth of cognac.

[JSngry]

That would be exslippificant.

[Steve Reynolds]

I'm interested in many younger musicians and approaches but fur whatever reason I've never been at all interested in Iyer. I did see him with Trio 3 and they were tremendous (as they've been every time I've seen them over the past 20 years) but Vijay added little except restraining the grand masters, Lake, Workman and Cyrille from getting even more open, loose and free.

for me there are so many more exciting musicians playing today - pianists and otherwise, for me to get all worked up about Vijay Iyer. The Trio 3 show a few years back I mentioned above was a let down. I was expecting to hear some fire and excitement and I heard none that night.

[mjzee]

I'm in the middle of reading the article (in hard copy; I read little bits at a time while I'm in the john).  To me, this piece explifies (thanks, Jim!) most that's wrong with jazz these days: the lauding of the Ivy League as a measure of quality, no mention of the music actually connecting with an audience, the outsized importance of racial/gender/cultural factors as being more important than the music itself, and, really, the creation of a body of music that can be studied, analyzed, taught, and tenured with no thought of it being enjoyed.  It's as if the music should be available in academic journals rather than in iTunes.  Give me Ben Webster any day, even though he wasn't an Ivy League professor.

[Guy Berger]

55 minutes ago, mjzee said:

I'm in the middle of reading the article (in hard copy; I read little bits at a time while I'm in the john).  To me, this piece explifies (thanks, Jim!) most that's wrong with jazz these days: the lauding of the Ivy League as a measure of quality, no mention of the music actually connecting with an audience, the outsized importance of racial/gender/cultural factors as being more important than the music itself, and, really, the creation of a body of music that can be studied, analyzed, taught, and tenured with no thought of it being enjoyed.  It's as if the music should be available in academic journals rather than in iTunes.  Give me Ben Webster any day, even though he wasn't an Ivy League professor.

But this is BS, right?  Iyer has quite obviously connected with his audience, an audience that enjoys his music and is probably larger than that of musicians currently replicating Webster's sound.

[JSngry]

Remember when Lennie Tristano's problem was that he was too intellectual? 

[7/4]

I never knew he was a Harvard professor until now.