For as long as he’s made music, pianist Vijay Iyer has stayed true to vision while always expanding. Iyer will bring his loaded sextet to the Contemporary Arts Center for two nights of music on Friday, November 30, and Saturday, November 31.
“We try to keep [the music] alive, change it as we go along,” Iyer told OffBeat over the phone. “We’ve played a lot this year, had quite a few concerts so the music keeps evolving as we come back to it.”
It’s true, Iyer’s sextet has been rather busy since the release of Far From Over on ECM las year which ranked 1st on Billboard’s Jazz Charts. “It’s funny because there’s what comes out on the albums, but there’s also what goes on in my musical life,” Iyer says. “And those are not always completely in phase with each other. This sextet has been together since 2011, and all the affiliations in the group go back much longer than that. I met Graham [Haynes] in New York 20 years ago, Steve Lehman for 15 years, Tyshawn [Sorey] for maybe 16 or 17 years. So we have this rich history, all these different points of contact […] So all the music comes from across my whole creative life. The last quarter of a century I guess you could say. And I try to just keep it alive.”
That form of longevity and loyalty among artists results in a cohesion that allows the group to perform highly inventive music. Along with Iyer on piano, Haynes on cornet and flugelhorn, Lehman on alto saxophone and Sorey on drums, the sextet is complete with Mark Shim on tenor saxophone and Stephan Crump on double bass. Iyer’s composition often falls under the label of contemporary jazz. With a knack for odd time signatures and use of polyrhythm, Iyer works at creating space for his acolytes to improvise on. “It becomes a way of creating space. A way of articulating space, of creating an environment for people to move in. Basically, rhythm is about ways of moving. […] It takes a certain level of listening skills,” Iyer explains about the group performing his material. “It’s how you listen to form, how you relate to form, how you deal with pulse. Also how you build form in the moment, so it takes a certain compositional sensibility. But the fact is that all of my creative life I was with people who were like that.”
This will not be Iyer’s first time in the Big Easy. Three years ago he brought the project Fieldwork (also involving Lehman’s saxophone and Sorey’s percussion) to HIP Fest. But his relationship with the city goes further, a first visit to play along Kidd Jordan twenty years ago, then one in 2009, which left a strong impression on the pianist. “I remember getting to know people who were part of the Mardi Gras Indian community, and just getting to know the city in the aftermath of destruction and recovery, seeing the resilience of the community. That was very powerful. You know when we’re artists who travel the globe to do our thing, it’s always grounding to make contact with a community like that, that has profound history to experience and commemorate. And of course I know quite few musicians who are from there, Terence Blanchard, Christian Scott. So getting to know how people from that community have participated in the contemporary culture is also really an education for me.”
“I’m just glad to come to one of the sites where it all began. I think a lot about history, our place in it and our relationship to it. I study the history of this music and New Orleans musicians have been close to me for as long as I’ve been making music. I also think about the music of Northern cities having roots in the South. A lot of musicians who were in New York, Chicago, D.C., Boston, were there because of the great migration. But then I also think about all the different sites in the Caribbean that were also like New Orleans. Havana, Bahia, Bogota, Kingston, San Juan etc. These are all sites that are very rich with similar kinds of legacies and histories, memories. Of course memories of horror and trauma, and also moments of redemption through culture. Through our making it. Through music. I always think about that. So I’m always looking forward to be in a place like New Orleans to share our music. I’m very excited.”
The Vijay Iyer sextet will be performing at The CAC Warehouse at 900 Camp St. New Orleans, LA 70130 starting at 7:30pm both nights. Tickets are available for $35 General Admission, $30 for CAC members. Tickets and additional information available on http://cacno.org/.
