[Essay]  Vijay Iyer Trio: Crafting Presence and Sowing Compassion

[Editor’s Note]: Jazz vocalist Andromeda Turre has a wealth of knowledge about the jazz world. In addition to the release of her new jazz suite, Turre’s is the founder of “Growing Up Jazz,” educational program that looks at American history through the lens of jazz. To help our readers get to know one of this year’s JazzFest White Plains performers, I asked Andromeda to interview Vijay Iyer, who will be performing with his trio during this year’s JazzFest White Plains. The festival, co-organized by ArtsWestchester, White Plains BID and the City of White Plains, and presented by Montefiore Einstein, is a five-day festival of free and affordable jazz performances taking place throughout downtown White Plains on September 11-15. -MAF

If there’s one thing the world needs in 2024, it’s Compassion. I’m speaking of course about Vijay Iyer’s 2024 release. In this new album, he ushers us into a place where we can grasp not only compassion but joy, peace and, perhaps the biggest gift of all, presence. 

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Iyer about this project and his musical companions Linda May Han Oh and Tyshawn Sorey, who will join him during this year’s JazzFest White Plains for a performance at ArtsWestchester on September 14.

Compassion, a soaring follow-up to his 2021 album Uneasy (both on ECM Records and featuring Han Oh and Sorey), developed throughout 2021-2022. “What we got to do as a band in that time was tour a whole bunch and that was revelatory because the band that you hear on Uneasy got to have a life in public. And of course I had played with both of them (Han Oh and Sorey) a ton, but actually, the way that things kinda deepened among the three of us came to life in all these new ways. And that’s why I wanted to document it,” Iyer shared.

The chemistry between the three is like drops of water merging into the ocean, seamlessly blending in a constant flow of collective energy. Sorey shows us that the drum also whispers; his immense control and synergy with sticks and brushes dance across the drum kit, controlling time while surfing through the narrative shifts of the music. 

The album brings together several compositions Iyer originally wrote for other projects, which he masterfully transformed via reductions or expansions to fit the trio configuration. It also includes a couple of tunes by other composers, including Stevie Wonder, John Stubblefield, and Geri Allen, for whom we both share a mutual deep appreciation.

Allen’s composition, Drummer’s Song, is featured on both Iyer’s Uneasy and Compassion records. He brings new life and a sense of playfulness to the tune in conversation with Sorey that is a delightful and heartfelt tribute to her legacy. Iyer is simultaneously in effortless alignment with bassist Linda May Han Oh. Her melodic bass lines and soft power draw from the same well from which Allen drank. During Han Oh’s mellifluous solos, Iyer perfectly balances weaving a web of support while never overpowering her, blissfully responding as she stands fully in her brilliance—a masterclass on comping. 

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Iyer perform live over the years with various instrumental formations and I can attest to the seemingly spiritual connection he has with the piano. The vibrations he’s able to produce from it have the capacity to draw you into another, better way of being.

For those lucky enough to have tickets for the trio’s September 14 performance, allow yourself to be guided through the music into an intimate experience with the present, or as Iyer describes, “a ritual of forgetting, just for a moment that there’s anywhere else other than where you are…the past recedes, any notion of the future recedes and then you’re all in this shared collective. That’s the gift that music gives all of us”. A gift Iyer is quite adept at channeling and a gift we all need today.