Jazz breaking news: Three is still a magic number for Vijay Iyer
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Ahead of his gig this weekend with Fieldwork at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Vijay Iyer began his all-too-brief two night run yesterday at the Vortex.
Tonight's show might be the final chance, the club says, to hear Iyer at the beloved Dalston venue as the stellar US/south Indian pianist-composer has got to the point in his career trajectory (he's just 40) that the larger concert hall venues beckon.
The acclaim he and the trio, intuitively tactile bassist Stephan Crump and diminutive powerhouse drummer Marcus Gilmore habitually achieve has been quite remarkable, and while a critics' darling, indeed most of the leading national newspaper reviewers were in the club last night along with the microphones of the BBC, Iyer remains true to his calling as an experimental artist of some daring and innovative flair.
Reprising 'Cardio,' a song the three played the last time they were in the club in the summer of 2010, and best of all in the first set Herbie Nichols' skittering 'Wildflower' from hot new album Accelerando, the trio took their time. After the first number, the final bar spoilt by a fruity sonic hum that Iyer acknowledged unabashed, the trio's melodic sense, something they have developed greatly in the last year, came more into play, but so too at least on one song were the interlocking patterns that drew to mind the minimalism and implied mysticism of Terry Riley. Gilmore, last in the UK as a member of Reflex, buoyed the band with at times the most subtle of touches, and his brush work rewarded close attention. Crump has a radical technique that recalls the tradition of Buell Neidlinger, but also seems to operate in a no-man's land of hard top rhythms that seem to dodge bar lines and instead feast on the pickings of the curveball pulse generated at will by Iyer. Miss this band at your peril.
– Stephen Graham