Reviews of Architextures

• DAZZLING... Vijay Iyer is fast becoming both a cornerstone of the Asian-American jazz movement in the Bay Area and a composer and performer of international significance, in his own right.
  -- San Francisco Chronicle online

• One of the most surprising -- and pleasing -- aspects of listening to Vijay Iyer's second CD is that the piano-playing composer rarely makes you think of other pianists. That's a rare quality, not only in a musician his age (24 at the time of this recording) but also in this era of jazz, when role models often loom larger than original imaginations.

  You may think of other music while immersing yourself in Iyer's Architextures: that of Thelonious Monk or Abdullah Ibrahim, especially during moments of the reflective solo pieces that open and close the album; of Duke Ellington or Charles Mingus during the octet piece "Meeting-of-Rivers"; of John Coltrane or Billy Harper during the deliberately mystical "Sadhu"; of Asia and Africa during "Three Peas." But that's essential to Iyer's strategy of juxtaposing and integrating elements from his South Indian heritage and the African American jazz and blues tradition.

  In his liner notes, Iyer makes reference to specific inspirations, including pianists (Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill) and writers (Jorge Luis Borges) and various cultural observations and experiences (such as the "technological incongruities" he witnessed during a trip to India). His genius lies in his ability to reshape all those influences in his own terms.

  As you might assume from the title, Iyer concerns himself with shape structure and enjoys toying with concepts and grafting them in unusual configurations. To those ends, he shifts his performing contexts from solo through trio (with bassist Jeff Brock and drummer Brad Hargreaves) to octet (adding saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa, Aaron Stewart, and Eric Crystal, guitarist Liberty Ellman, and bassist Kevin Ellington Mingus). Whatever the setting, the tunes engage you with intelligent melodies and harmonies and wonderfully twitching rhythms. And the sharp-edged playing always serves the greater purpose of musical form and carefully tempered emotional expression, epitomizing "new jazz" at its best.
  --Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 22, 1998.

• A leader in the Bay Area's Asian-American jazz movement, pianist Iyer's work displays great maturity and passion...

  One great development in modern American music has been the addition of other cultures to the equation. Vijay brings his own unique background to bear in the music he's making, and it's just pouring out and deserves to be heard... I highly recommend this CD, not just as a good example of "Asian-American" jazz, but just great music period. It's just good, passionate, improvisatorial music that displays a lot of heart and character, and inventiveness.
  --Blaine Fallis, Modern Jazz Online

• Berkeley pianist-composer Vijay Iyer, one of the most talented young musicians in the Bay Area, celebrates the release of his superb sophomore recording, _Architextures_, on the AsianImprov label, with a showcase at Yoshi's on Monday, April 27. A first-generation Indian American and a member of the first wave of South Asian-American jazz artists, Iyer draws inspiration from Indian music, such as rhythmic techniques related to cadences and beat cycles for creating tension and release, as well as from the African-American music tradition. What emerges is a distinctive and adventurous amalgam of music that tells stories, provokes thought, and takes the listener on spirited journeys.
  -- Dan Ouellette, The East Bay Express, March 20, 1998.

• Vijay Iyer is "one of the most fascinating jazz pianists around," says Berkeley's East Bay Express, and I couldn't have said it better myself. It is getting ever more difficult to hear someone with something really new to say, but Architextures should establish Vijay Iyer as a pianist to be reckoned with. He credits Duke, Monk and Cecil Taylor as influences, but there are other, more arcane echoes, especially in the solo "Prelude" and "Postlude: Prayer" - notably Olivier Messiaen, whether by coincidence or real contact, I don't know. Anyway, influences are really moot here, because Mr. Iyer has an individual style that more than transcends any resonance of past masters.

  There are six tracks by an octet consisting of Rudresh Mahanthappa on alto, Aaron Stewart on tenor, Eric Crystal on tenor and soprano, Liberty Ellman on guitar, Jeff Brock and Kevin Ellington Mingus (yes, his grandson) on basses, and Brad Hargreaves on drums. Iyer performs the other tracks with a trio including Brock and Hargreaves. "Meeting-of-Rivers" is a fascinating octet piece that justifies the disc's title by itself: the octet's big sound plays with dissonance, with and against the piano, edging in and out of conventional tonality and featuring superbly inventive solos from Stewart, Crystal, and Mahanthappa. Iyer turns in an absorbing and confounding solo with much more of a jazz feel than appeared in most of his Ôcomping. Don't miss this one, folks.

  "Microchips and Bullock Carts," a trio number, follows, characterized by intriguing stops and starts that make for a somewhat ominous feel. "Charms" is the other side of the coin; justifying its title, a sunny number that still contains plenty of Iyer's intoxicating scalar and chordal work.

  "Sadhu" is another vertiginous octet workout, a trifle reminiscent of psychedelic jazz of the early Seventies, with a horn ostinato and solos that would fit fine on a Pharoah Sanders-Alice Coltrane album. Yet here again the piano is something else. Just when you thought the sound couldn't get more Eastern comes "Three Peas." The reeds' unison work and dynamic control is first-rate. The solos are again a bit Pharoanic, but not without effectiveness or charm.

  The rest of the disc amply justifies the title - carefully and uniquely constructed music of a wide variety of textures: not just solo, trio, and octet, but East and West, Indian music and jazz, inside and outside, and no doubt more. Vijay Iyer clearly has an immense musical talent. Architextures amply rewards repeated listens and has made me, for one, make a note to look out for the man's next disc and even greater things to come.
  --Robert Spencer, All About Jazz, April 1998

• Vijay Iyer goes from introspective solo piano to a churning horn-and-electric-guitar-laden octet on Architextures. Yet even at their most heady, his compositions never hit an unneeded note, and the arrangements are full of subtlety. One can hear stylistic references to Monk and Herbie Hancock, but ... Iyer's is a new music that builds on older forms.
  -- Larry Kelp, The East Bay Express, April 17, 1998