Il trio del pianista Vijay Iyer è stato premiato dall'industria discografica tedesca con l'Echo Award, equivalente tedesco dei Grammy ed uno dei premi musicali più prestigiosi al mondo.
Il premio, che si basa sui voti sia di una giuria di esperti, che della scelta del pubblico, viene per la prima volta assegnato ad una formazione di jazz, dope che per anni è stato monopolizzato da artisti pop o di musica classica.
La notizia è tratta da un articolo pubblicato sul sito della Deutsche Welle con un'intervista allo stesso pianista
Band founder Vijay Iyer is multi-talented. Born the son of Indian immigrants to the US, he grew up playing classical violin. He studied mathematics and physics at Yale University and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a doctorate in arts and technology.
During his student days he started playing piano, jammed in jazz clubs, and began exploring composition. For him, music became the powerhouse of creativity and the means of self-expression that he had been searching for. But the mathematician in the musician remained.
"Anything that's put together with care and precision involves measurement and that's also true in music," said Iyer. "You have measurements of time and measurements of frequency or pitch, to perceive music is to perceive order in sound, so when you're talking about mathematics in music, you're talking about ordering events."
The trio's album combines mathematical with spiritual and emotional elements - which Iyer said don't contradict each other but have always coexisted in music.
This synthesis of mathematical perfection and deep spirituality has underpinned Vijay Iyer's works since the late 1990s. He has composed for orchestras and string quartets and written ballet scores and movie soundtracks, but his heart belongs to jazz in general and his Echo-Award-winning trio in particular.
For Iyer, the genre of the piano trio has been an elemental force in the development of jazz music.
"It's something so deeply explored by so many masters, especially the pianist-composers like Duke Ellington or Herbie Nichols - people who had a vision of how music can sound," said Iyer. "I'm not caught up in displaying my own virtuosity but I'm interested in projecting a unity of intent and that's something the trio can offer."
That "unity of intent" may be difficult to define but is highly apparent when listening to the trio's music. Vijay Iyer is the composer and frontman, but when the band performs, he does not regard himself as a conductor in the classical sense. Improvisation is the life-blood of jazz, he said, but this has to be given a structure created by the composer.
"Most of the time, when I'm composing, I'm setting up a situation for things to happen, so it's more like architecture, in the sense that I want people to move around in it," said Iyer, "I want people to live and stretch out and be free inside of the space that I've created."
Si può leggere l'articolo intergrale a questo indirizzo.
Ecco un video del trio di Iyer, che presenta la splendida Galang ai Systems Two Studios di Brooklyn NY nel marzo del 2009
Il premio, che si basa sui voti sia di una giuria di esperti, che della scelta del pubblico, viene per la prima volta assegnato ad una formazione di jazz, dope che per anni è stato monopolizzato da artisti pop o di musica classica.
La notizia è tratta da un articolo pubblicato sul sito della Deutsche Welle con un'intervista allo stesso pianista
Band founder Vijay Iyer is multi-talented. Born the son of Indian immigrants to the US, he grew up playing classical violin. He studied mathematics and physics at Yale University and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a doctorate in arts and technology.
During his student days he started playing piano, jammed in jazz clubs, and began exploring composition. For him, music became the powerhouse of creativity and the means of self-expression that he had been searching for. But the mathematician in the musician remained.
"Anything that's put together with care and precision involves measurement and that's also true in music," said Iyer. "You have measurements of time and measurements of frequency or pitch, to perceive music is to perceive order in sound, so when you're talking about mathematics in music, you're talking about ordering events."
The trio's album combines mathematical with spiritual and emotional elements - which Iyer said don't contradict each other but have always coexisted in music.
This synthesis of mathematical perfection and deep spirituality has underpinned Vijay Iyer's works since the late 1990s. He has composed for orchestras and string quartets and written ballet scores and movie soundtracks, but his heart belongs to jazz in general and his Echo-Award-winning trio in particular.
For Iyer, the genre of the piano trio has been an elemental force in the development of jazz music.
"It's something so deeply explored by so many masters, especially the pianist-composers like Duke Ellington or Herbie Nichols - people who had a vision of how music can sound," said Iyer. "I'm not caught up in displaying my own virtuosity but I'm interested in projecting a unity of intent and that's something the trio can offer."
That "unity of intent" may be difficult to define but is highly apparent when listening to the trio's music. Vijay Iyer is the composer and frontman, but when the band performs, he does not regard himself as a conductor in the classical sense. Improvisation is the life-blood of jazz, he said, but this has to be given a structure created by the composer.
"Most of the time, when I'm composing, I'm setting up a situation for things to happen, so it's more like architecture, in the sense that I want people to move around in it," said Iyer, "I want people to live and stretch out and be free inside of the space that I've created."
Si può leggere l'articolo intergrale a questo indirizzo.
Ecco un video del trio di Iyer, che presenta la splendida Galang ai Systems Two Studios di Brooklyn NY nel marzo del 2009
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