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Artist: Vijay Iyer
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Vijay Iyer:

Compassion

Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his acclaimed 2021 ECM disc Uneasy — the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey — with Compassion, another creative leap in league with these two gifted partners. The New York Times captured the distinctive qualities of this group, pointing to the trio’s flair for playing “with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity… while stoking a kind of writhing internal tension. Crucial to that balance is their ability to connect with each other almost telepathically.” Compassion, Iyer’s eighth release as a leader for ECM, continues his drive to explore fresh territory while also referencing his forebears along the way, two of them long associated with the label. The album includes a powerful interpretation of Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed,” which Iyer selected as an indirect homage to the late Chick Corea. Another tip of the hat comes with “Nonaah,” a whirlwind of a piece by avant-garde sage Roscoe Mitchell, a key mentor for the pianist. Then there are Iyer’s own melodically alluring, rhythmically invigorating compositions, ranging from the pensive title track to the hook-laced highlights “Tempest” and “Ghostrumental.”

The New Yorker, in its review of Uneasy, described that album as “a triumph of small-group interchange and fertile invention. Iyer’s piano work, whether arrestingly skittish or clothed in powerful solemnity, resounds with a visceral intensity of purpose, and his resourceful compatriots respond in kind.” As with Uneasy, the trio recorded Compassion at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon just outside New York City, with the album produced by Iyer and ECM’s Manfred Eicher. The result is a sonic blend of warmth and impact, atmosphere and clarity — ideal for appreciating the propulsive interplay that has developed with this pianist, bassist and drummer. Although this is only the second album by the trio, the three musicians have been connected for longer.

Vijay Iyer:

Uneasy

Uneasy, with Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh, is Vijay Iyer's second trio album on ECM and his seventh appearance as a leader on the label. Navigating from one shape-shifting idea to another, he continues to push boundaries from one album to the next. His unique musical approach has gained him many accolades and much praise from the international press, The New York Times summarizing his persona as a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". On Uneasy, he draws on the history of the music while continuing to push it forward. In the course of this endeavour, the political and social turbulences dominating today's American landscape are reflected in musical contemplation and tense space. In his liner notes, Vijay elaborates on how today "the word ‘uneasy' feels like a brutal understatement, too mild for cataclysmic times. But maybe, since the word contains its own opposite, it reminds us that the most soothing, healing music is often born of and situated within profound unrest; and conversely, the most turbulent music may contain stillness, coolness, even wisdom."

Uneasyportrays this cast's first studio session after having played together throughout 2019 – Tyshawn and Vijay's partnership even going back to 2003, when they both appeared on Vijay's quartet album "Blood Sutra", featuring saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and bassist Stephan Crump. They've worked together frequently since, including on Vijay's 2017 ECM release Far From Over. Linda May Han Oh is a new collaborator of Vijay's, although their professional relationship has been developing for several years. A consistent guest faculty member of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in Alberta, Canada, the bassist has become well acquainted with Vijay and Tyshawn, the workshop's co-artistic directors.

Linda and Tyshawn have both recorded with ECM before – Sorey playing on Roscoe Mitchell's Bells For The South Side and Ohadding her unique voice as bass to German pianist Florian Weber's ECM debut Lucent Waters. Her nimble language and Tyshawn's robust but deeply musical swing add the complementing pieces that set Uneasy apart from Vijay's past work and build a striking contrast to his last trio outing Break Stuff. "We have an energy together that is very distinct. It has a different kind of propulsion, a different impulse and a different spectrum of colours", raves Vijay in regard to his trio partners.

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Vijay Iyer:

Mutations

Mutations is Vijay Iyer's first album as a leader for ECM, and a recording that will widen perceptions of the pianist-composer's work. At its center is "Mutations I-X", a composition scored for string quartet, piano, and electronics. A major piece built out of cells and fragments, it veers through many atmospheres, from moment to moment propulsive, enveloping, lyrical, luminescent, and strangely beautiful. Through thematic interactivity, the interweaving of acoustic and electronic sound-textures, and some decisive improvisational interventions in notated music, Vijay Iyer has created a multi-faceted suite whose very subject is change. Iyer gives a positive value to the concept of ‘mutation' in this music, and variously appears in it as an interpreter of notated elements, as an improviser, and as  "a sort of laptop artist, mixing in noise and different sounds," encouraging the transformative processes.