Recording of the Week, Vijay Iyer Trio - Compassion

Vijay Iyer is one of the most elaborate musicians on the current ECM roster. A doctorate-holding musicologist, he has been voted Downbeat Artist of the Year four times alone, between 2012 and 2018. His work is perhaps best expressed through the words of multi-faceted Bang on a Can: “Iyer’s elegant, subtle improvisatory style has made him a dynamic crossroads between many musical worlds. His musical language is grounded in the rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa, the African American creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and the lineage of composer-pianists from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen.”

His first recording for the label, Mutations, appeared in 2014, centred around a fragmentary composition scored for string quartet, piano and electronics that highlighted the musician’s skills as a composer. Works for sextet, a piano duo with Craig Taborn, a collaboration with Wadada Leo Smith and a blistering score inspired by the centennial of the Rite of Spring transposed via the Hindu festival of Holi would soon follow. 

Echoing Memorophilia, the first album he recorded in 1995 at the age of 23, he returned to his tried-and-tested trio with the release of Uneasy in 2021 that sparked a new chapter in his career alongside drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh. At the time, Iyer expressed how the trio was pivotal in his learning how to make music, forming the elementary knowledge of any budding jazz pianist. Citing such canonic trios as the ones led by Ahmad Jamal, Red Garland and Keith Jarrett amongst his primary influences, it’s easy to imagine the vast ways in which musicians have employed this lineup to explore different approaches to rhythm, counterpoint and form throughout the development of modern jazz. 

In other settings, the leader is forced to act in a more disciplinary and orchestrating fashion, in his words ‘[putting] the composer on display as composer’. But, there still remains an unanswered question, and one which these instrumentations aren’t always capable of asking. In the case of the piano trio that can habitually obfuscate the line between composition and improvisation, one is left asking: What is form, and what is process? Perhaps there is no obvious difference, but it's a conundrum which has presented Iyer with the modus operandi for asking these interesting and specific questions for over half his lifetime. 

Owing to his academic interests, Iyer’s understanding of the way music unfolds is deeply connected with rhythm; specifically, drums. Sorey is a prime candidate for such demonstrations of this pivotally meaningful axis. Together, Iyer (9 years his colleague’s senior) acts as ‘co-drummer’, playing with each other, rather than over or on top of and beneath one another. 

These musicians have been through so much together, their intrinsic sense of trust billows out beyond the recording. Sorey hears everything his teammates play, adjusting to their mistakes with his sheer technical ability as a listener, not to mention the deep perspective and recall his musical mind dually possesses. Oh displays a similar acuity in terms of perspective on everything going down in the field of play; her accurate sense of timing and melodic hearing never leaves her mystified or guessing, but fortifies the overall familial connection built on compassion and acceptance as easily as breathing. 

The magical impulse that compelled these musicians to first record together several years ago reignites their return on Compassion, and not for one second is it lost here. At the impetus of their musical relationship came a moment of discovery and realisation, a distinct feeling they wanted to capture, preserve and explore more in ultimate celebration of their unity as a trio. At this point came the question of repertoire, curating works that highlight the band’s shared assets and skills – both in terms of new material plus works he’d always wanted to do that belonged to others, such as Roscoe Mitchell’s perplexing ‘Nonaah’, or a euphoric take on Stevie Wonder’s ‘Overjoyed’. In this way, the threesome takes on a piece of repertoire initially not their own, understanding what it offers them in exchange for its demands and learns how this transaction allows them to transcend to uncharted territories, higher than ever.