Jazz breaking news: Vijay Iyer signs to ECM in bumper early 2014 release schedule
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Award-winning pianist Vijay Iyer has signed to the iconic German record label ECM and will release a new album, Mutations, on 28 February 2014.
The album was recently recorded at New York’s Avatar Studios with ECM label boss Manfred Eicher producing and sets out to explore new sonic terrain in Iyer’s career that has so far taken in solo, duo and trio works. The album will feature a suite, ‘Mutations I-X’, which constitutes 10 movements for string quartet, piano and laptop featuring violinists Miranda Cuckson and Michi Wiancko, viola player Kyle Armbrust and cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman, with Iyer playing piano and adding in electronic sounds and real-time sound processing.
This isn’t Iyer’s first appearance on ECM, which was on Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory album Far Side from 2007 alongside his equally versatile keyboardist colleague Craig Taborn, and this partnership has been mooted for a possible future Iyer/Taborn duo album on the label. Iyer’s move to ECM follows the pianist topping many critic’s polls as well as picking up numerous awards, the most recent of which was the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in September 2013.
And as part of a bumper early new year schedule other albums released in January 2014 include popular pianist Tord Gustavsen Quartet’s Extended Circle, revered Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou’s Medea, the Norma Winstone/Glauco Venier/Klaus Gesing Trio’s Dance Without Answer and powerful Norwegian bass virtuoso Arild Andersen Trio’s Mira, which features acclaimed Scots saxophonist Tommy Smith and Italian drum whirlwind Paolo Vinaccia.
– Mike Flynn