Vijay Iyer

VIJAY IYER (VID-jay EYE-yer) is is a pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, electronic musician, and writer based in New York City. One of today's most acclaimed young jazz artists, he has released thirteen albums, most recently "Historicity," which was named #1 jazz album of 2009 in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and the annual Village Voice jazz critics poll. In recent years, Iyer won the Downbeat Magazine International Critics' Poll in the Rising Star Jazz Artist, Composer, and Pianist categories, was named Up & Coming Musician of the Year in the JJA Jazz Awards, and received the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous composer commissions. In 2003, he collaborated with poet and producer Mike Ladd on "In What Language?", a song cycle about the post-9/11 world. His oratorio with Ladd, "Still Life with Commentator," was commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music for its 2006 Next Wave Festival. Iyer has also composed orchestral and chamber works; scored for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated with poets and choreographers; and joined forces with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental, electronic, and Indian classical music. His employers have included Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Amiri Baraka, Butch Morris, Oliver Lake, dead prez, Karsh Kale, Talvin Singh, Imani Uzuri, and DJ Spooky, among others. Iyer teaches at New York University, The New School, and School for Improvisational Music. His writings appear in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology, JazzTimes, Wire, The Guardian, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation, Sound Unbound, and Arcana IV. He is a Steinway artist.