This past weekend I headed to a more local venue: the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts in Pasadena, CA — a mere forty minutes from my house compared to the six-hour flight to New York City. It’s the second time I’ve seen the Vijay Iyer Trio perform this summer (minus the drummer — in NYC, I saw Justin Brown; here, it was Marcus Gilmore from the Historicity album, along with bassist Stephan Crump); when I was back in New York a few months earlier I was able to catch Iyer at the Birdland Jazz Club (see the post about that here).
The Levitt Pavilion, on the flipside, was a completely different venue. The trio performed on a smaller Hollywood Bowl-esque stage as I sat looking up at them from a field of trimmed park grass, waving away the occasional pesky fly — quite a change from the dimmed lights and comfortable chairs of the Birdland Club.
The show was scheduled to begin at seven in the evening, but the Pavilion hosted a “Lecture on the Lawn” forty-five minutes earlier with Iyer, alongside 89.3 KPCC-FM’s Shirley Jahad, exploring Iyer’s history with the music and his unique perspective on it. Particularly interesting was Iyer’s wide breadth of listening; he mentioned musicians I’d heard from older mentors like Monk, Ellington, Andrew Hall, Randy Weston — and then surprised me with names that I’m even just getting into; specifically, Flying Lotus, an experimental electronic musician based in Los Angeles. Poised and composed in front of an audience that eventually grew into hundreds of people crowded into the park, Iyer modestly remarked that he saw himself as just a part of the “historical flow of the music,” moving on to speak about learning how to play the piano by ear and gaining experience from working as a house pianist in Oakland.
“The music is larger than me,” Iyer concluded. About making music — “All I can do is make music that I like and hope that it resonates with other people.” On collaborating with others — “I really try to be myself,” but playing with other musicians “helps you discover parts of yourself.”
That night the trio played selections from their recent album, Historicity, along with a cover of Stevie Wonder’s Big Brother and one of my favorite Iyer covers, Michael Jackson’s Human Nature. I’m constantly intrigued by the fact that the focus in the trio doesn’t lie entirely in who stands out during a solo or who carries the melody during a piece, but rather in the exploration of what sounds right. Iyer’s pieces move along like a train of thought — smooth, connected, uninterrupted, evolving from one idea to another, passed along from one musician to another.
I also was lucky enough to get my hands on a pre-release copy of Iyer’s new solo album, Solo. (I admit that I’m guilty of reading and rereading his autograph – To Rachel, Best wishes, Vijay Iyer — with an involuntary smile on my face.) And especially fortunate for me is the first track of the album: Human Nature. I’m most likely hitting the replay button as you read this.
CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Human Nature/Solo/Vijay Iyer
(also, if you think you’re up to it, check out Flying Lotus: Do the Astral Plane/Cosmogramma/Flying Lotus)
P.S. This coming Sunday (August 22), jazz trumpet player Christian Scott is going to be playing a free concert at this same venue — come and check it out!
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