{"id":6940,"date":"2023-09-26T22:03:22","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T03:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=6940"},"modified":"2023-09-26T22:08:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T03:08:17","slug":"live-composing-vijay-iyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/live-composing-vijay-iyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Composing: A Conversation with Vijay Iyer on ‘Love in Exile’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Far too often, people equate avant-garde expressionism to high-volume proclamations with flurries of notes. To an uninitiated listener, this perspective is understandable when one considers John Coltrane\u2019s sheets of sound, Cecil Taylor\u2019s densely clustered notes, and Peter Brotzmann\u2019s rough, bluesy cries. But an isolated focus lessens the significance of the artists who have made this music as it overlooks the most critical part of their craft; the ability to take resources at their disposal to push music into new areas. With this broader outlook, one is reminded there is nothing about creative music that expels moments of silence and peacefulness. Indeed, there is a long history of freer recordings mining this area of tranquility. Vijay Iyer, Arooj Aftab, and Shahzad Ismaily\u2019s Love in Exile<\/em> (Verve, 2023) reminds of that lineage while providing a strong comment on its continued vitality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand Love in Exile<\/em>, one should first examine what the recording is not. Throughout the recording, Iyer, Aftab, and Ismaily provide enchanting dialogues. It\u2019s easy to assume they are preconceived, but they are not. Instead, the magic of the moment is intrinsic to their conversations. But the absence of an existing plan also does not mean the artists make things up as they go along or rely on luck. Instead, one can sense each musician\u2019s deep study and deep listening melding to produce something unique to the moment but not emergent from nothing. This aspect is precisely why the trio refuses to call their work \u201cimprovisational\u201d and instead prefers the term \u201clive composing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also erroneous to assume Love in Exile<\/em> portrays some mere amalgamation of jazz and South Asian music. As all three artists are of either Pakistani (Aftab and Ismaily) or Tamil (Iyer) descent, there will always be some shared features of their heritage incorporated into their works. But even the most openly subcontinent-influenced element on the album – Aftab\u2019s vocals in Urdu – serves more than underscoring cultural ties. By not sharing a narrative in a directly linear way, even while permitting the stories\u2019 essence to remain, she shapes her voice to sound more like a trumpet or saxophone. In doing so, she shifts the trio in a new direction. Similarly, Iyer builds upon his impressive experiences – with Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, and others – and his love of Alice Coltrane\u2019s work to imbue the trio\u2019s work with a spiritual weight. Holding it all together, even as he pushes boundaries, is polymath Ismaily switching between bass and synths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love in Exile<\/em>\u00a0is a breathtaking recording that ignores labels to present a broader truth on the beauty of art and music. As shown at Newport<\/a>, the trio is particularly enrapturing live, for it is in the live performance that the listener is enveloped in the surroundings and made a part of the moments of creation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PostGenre: There is something about Love in Exile<\/em> that is oddly reminiscent of some of John Coltrane\u2019s later work and some of Alice Coltrane\u2019s work in a way that goes beyond the fact that some of their music also had South Asian influences. The shared use of freer form and speaking to some higher power seemingly unites their music with this trio’s. Do you feel that is a fair assessment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vijay Iyer: Yeah, I’m glad you noticed that. I’m not sure I can draw a direct line between the works of John and Alice Coltrane and this trio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both John and Alice have had such an extreme influence on me that I don’t even know where to begin. But I think Alice Coltrane – Sv\u0101min\u012b Tur\u012byasa\u1e45g\u012bt\u0101nanda, as she is called – created a space for very different notions of form, different approaches to time, and different temporalities. She gave a sense of cascading infinities that you can feel in her music. Her music makes you feel like you could sit in it all day, and it would be fine. You wouldn’t run out of feelings for it. It would still sustain you, hold you, nourish you, and rejuvenate you. It could both calm you and trouble you. Her music gives you all these feelings together. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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