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Vijay Iyer Biography

Vijay Iyer (born October 26, 1971) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, electronic musician, and writer based in New York City. He is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. He became the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts (in the Department of Music) at Harvard University in early 2014.

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Vijay Iyer Quotes

I like the idea of the objecthood of music being destabilized by process and things like improvisation. That's what empowers us; that's how we make each day new as players, as people.

Empowering, Idea, Like, People, Player, Things

I find myself skeptical of music that forces you to have a certain experience, emotional reaction, or specific constructive arc of experience. But performers should still take care of that, to a certain extent - how does it add up? What you want from performance, because we're all in a room together, is that somehow we've gotten somewhere at the end, together. You could call that a sense of narrative, but it's not so obvious how that happens. One way it happens is by everyone caring about it happening.

Arc, Caring, Emotional, Music, Skeptical, Together

It doesn't matter if it's jazz or not. It's about how we listen, how we interact, how we guide our attention when we're listening, and how we can refine what we're doing musically. Also how we can create our own music, and what opportunities that can bring us, as creative musicians. And then insisting that musicians put themselves through an intellectually rigorous process, which involves a lot of reading and writing, while insisting that music scholars think about ethics.

Musicians, Opportunity, Process, Reading, Writing

If you look at my collaborations, it is very much in line with all these others in the sense that it is a building of community, particularly among artists of color. This is what I learned from the example of elder African-American artists, which is where it is all coming from; to refuse to be silenced.

Among, Artist, Color, Community, Line, Refuse

The sense of having to be the best at everything gets in the way of anybody doing anything. I put all that aside; it's not worth thinking about when I'm there. My agenda as an artist doesn't go away when I teach. It actually gets intensified.

Agenda, Artist, Everything, Going Away, Sense, Thinking

To interact means being among others, and taking others into account in a way, to act.

Account, Act, Among, Interact, Mean, Way

Lately I feel being political is also about the company I keep and the ideas I put forward. When I do a curate a program or do a workshop, I want to make it intergenerational; I want to have women on the faculty and also among the students.

Among, Ideas, Political, Program, Students, Want

We think of music as this substance that flows - you turn on the tap, and there it is, streaming off your computer - but that's not how we evolved as a species. We evolved to listen to each other, and the reason we're able to listen to music in the terms is talking about is because we're really good at listening to each other. But this kind of technology has allowed us to forget that music is the sound of each other.

Listening, Reason, Sound, Technology, Terms, Thinking

This is a tradition of resistance to the term that's as old as the term itself, especially because that term has been used to commodify and reduce black creativity, and also to appropriate and sell it. That's what John Coltrane said in an interview with a Japanese journalist: "Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist. " And he's treated as one of the central figures in the history of jazz. So if he rejected it, then why is it weird when I do it? I'm in the tradition!

Black, Commodify, Creativity, Jazz, Term, Word

The phrase I use is 'easy camaraderie. ' Non-western immigrants of color and their progeny like me - my parents came here fifty years ago and I was born and raised in Rochester - whether it's Teju Cole, or Rudresh Mahanthappa, or Himanshu Suri, or Miya Masaoka, or Barack Obama, we all have that in common. And that's different from being descended from enslaved African captives. I am very conscious of that difference, and conscious of how easy it is to forget about it. I find myself always coming up against that.

Captives, Common, Different, Fifty, Parent, Rochester

My concern with this approach is that music becomes a substance devoid of people. It's a consumer model of what music is: subjects listening to objects. For me, music is subjects listening to subjects. It's about intersubjectivity.

Becomes, Concern, Listening, Music Is, People, Substance

Resonance is a physical process through which similarities are highlighted.

Highlighted, Physical, Process, Resonance, Similarities, Similarity

A successful relationship is not about two people staring into each other's eyes, it's about two people looking ahead together. I think in order to construct, it's not just, "you do this, then I'll do this. " It's more like, "let's work on these ideas together, and just move together, with these ideas. " It does create a balance.

Eye, Moving, People, Successful, Work

I want to make sure that I represent a variety of backgrounds and that represents the reality out here in the world.

Backgrounds, Reality, Represent, Represents, Want, World

I think what music can offer is the feeling of forward motion, also the feeling of accumulation of information, of sensations, of feelings, like we're going somewhere. When I say 'feel like,' I don't mean to suggest that it's not real, but that it's the work of the imagination, which is what narrative is.

Accumulation, Feelings, Mean, Real, Say, Thinking

Beyond that, it gets down to the nuts and bolts of discipline - not a tradition or genre, I don't care about that, actually - but discipline in the sense of just working on music and working on thinking about music. It doesn't matter if it's jazz or not. It's about how we listen, how we interact, how we guide our attention when we're listening, and how we can refine what we're doing musically.

Discipline, Listening, Music, Sense, Thinking

Music is made of what we do when we move, and we can only move in certain ways, in certain ranges of tempo because of the inherent constraints that our bodies offer, or you can call them 'affordances' - that's another word for me. It's a little more positive; doesn't make it seem like a limitation, but rather, a set of opportunities. You can say that that's part of music making, but there's also the imagination. The power of the imagination is kind of trumping - sorry to have to use that word.

Inherent, Moving, Opportunity, Set, Sorry, Tempo

When I give a concert, I know they're not going to hear everything; there might be a lot going on. My individual perceptual and cognitive path through the music is just that: one path through music. My experience will be probably at some level different from other people's, and that multiplicity of experience has to be supported by the music. I might just focus on the cowbell the whole time - maybe I have a fever for more cowbell!

Different, Everything, Experience, Focus, Giving, Whole

With electronic music it's often a little more hidden - the relationship between gesture and sound - which makes it confounding for audiences. But the ingredients of electronic music are the same ingredients of nonelectronic music.

Audience, Electronic Music, Hidden, Ingredients, Music, Sound

The thing about physicists is that they tend to think that everything is physics. I don't. That's not what music is to me. You can explain aspects of it in physical terms, including the physics of anatomy: how our bodies move, the torsional moment of inertia, the way you move your body to a beat, the inherent periodicities of the heartbeat, the gait. That's physics, too, I guess - maybe they'd call it biophysics.

Heart, Move, Moving, Periodicities, Tend, Thinking

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