My concern with this approach is that music becomes a substance devoid of people. It's a consumer model … - Vijay Iyer

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There are so many things that we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

Vijay Iyer

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

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I've realized that a lot of people come to me because of what's called identity. In the sense of "he's like me" - more like identification. Identity is one of those nonsense words: it's been used so much it doesn't mean anything. As individuals, we don't want to stay the same; identity means sameness, and we don't want to be the same, we want to keep changing, we want to grow, we want to become something else. We want to evolve. So when people come to me, it's about resonance - it goes back to that word.

Become, Grow, Identity, Individuals, Mean, People

I use are provisional terms, and they usually put any proper nouns in critical distance. I'm in a tradition of people who resist naming, fixity. That means it's a tradition of people who insist on mobility, who defy proper nouns and genres and those kinds of things. When I push back against the word 'jazz' it's because I've learned that from many, many elders who think that way. I'm not just being a jerk.

Back, Distance, Jerk, Mean, Terms, Thinking

Music making features real-time creation, real-time decisions and actions. It's basically improvisation, which is the stuff of everyday life. In the realm of discourse about music, improvisation is marginal, but in the realm of doing it, it's omnipresent. Strange distinction here: we're improvising all the time, but when we tend to talk about music, we tend to talk about objects that are fixed, like recordings, scores, pieces.

Action, Decision, Everyday, Omnipresent, Realm, Strange

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

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