Back in Montreal for the first time since the pandemic, New York pianist, composer and fierce improviser Vijay Iyer will play at the Festival international de jazz de Montréal (FIJM) in a new context, that of the project Love in Exile who brought him together with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. “Each performance we give is unique, since we don’t have a repertoire strictly speaking,” says the musician, who discusses with THE Duty of the phenomenon of improvisation in music, his field of expertise.
From his New York office, Vijay Iyer recalls his stops at the FIJM, “in trio, solo, once with [le trompettiste] Wadada Leo Smith”. The last time, unless I’m mistaken, in the company of Craig Taborn, two pianos side by side on the small stage of the Gesù.
On June 29, it is not to introduce us, with her trio (Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums), the material of the amazing Uneasy released last year by ECM (a new album will be released this winter) which he will revisit, but to deploy with Aftab and Ismaily the universe of Love in Exile — on the main stage of the Monument-National, proof of the power of attraction of this magnificent album launched last March on the Verve label.
“This music has something unique”, tries to describe Vijay Iyer, instigator of this meeting with Arooj Aftab, who came last year to present the material from his album. Vulture Prince, and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad, who can be heard on Feist’s latest album. “The fruit of our collaboration was a revelation for us too,” he says. You know, living in New York, you constantly end up working with a bunch of different musicians. However, when I had the idea of this trio, I was simply curious to see what it could give. »
They did not expect their musical conversation to take such a sublime form, between contemporary music and modal jazz, Aftab singing fragments of poems mainly in Urdu, the musical heritage of the Asian subcontinent serving as a backdrop — Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily have Pakistani origins, Vijay Iyer was born in the United States to parents of Tamil origin.
“From the first moments spent playing together, we felt something,” continues Iyer. It was a revelation for us: “Wow! Can we play this?” A musical discovery, which we wanted to both protect and share with the public. » Love in Exile, it is first of all a climate that sets in and allows us “to feel the passage of time differently”, abounds Iyer. “We feel out of step with the hectic pace of everyday life, that’s what makes this project so special. We play at our own pace and when we are on the same wavelength as we are when we play together, something is affirmed in us. We feel that we are no longer alone. »
Each performance we give is unique, since we don’t have a repertoire as such
Live dialing
Vijay Iyer spent a long time on this notion of musical living together, them on stage and us in the room. In addition to being a pianist and composer, the musicologist holds a professorship in the Department of Music at Harvard University; as part of his research, he studied the mechanics of musical improvisation — which is not exactly what Love in Exilehe nuances.
“One day, during an interview, Arooj had this sentence to describe what we do: live composition [live composition]. This is, in my opinion, the most succinct and clear way of describing how we work. What does it mean ? That when we play together, a form of order is set up during the performance”, an order conditioned by the virtuosity and the journey of each musician.
“Imagine you have a pantry full of ingredients and you are asked to cook six different dishes with them. Inevitably, from one dish to another, we will recognize some of these ingredients: hey! more shallots. The shape of the dish (the performance) varies from recipe to recipe, but the ingredients (melodic and harmonic patterns, rhythmic structures, etc.) are more or less the same. “These are musical behaviors, in a way, or even elements of our musical language. You can recognize them – not the exact patterns or melodies, but you will recognize” in the performance something from the studio recording of Love in Exile.
He prefers the term Arooj Aftab—live composition—rather than improvisation, a word which he perceives “has a connotation that devalues music. Regularly, after concerts, I am told: “So what you do is improvised music?” There is an implication: it is not serious, not true, not substantial, because it has not been studied. While on the contrary, there is a whole knowledge that allows improvisation, a world on which I myself am dependent: for me, improvised music is a heritage of Afro-American and Caribbean music – and African , to a certain extent — and then music from the Asian subcontinent. »
“I learned the classical violin growing up, but I also spent my life studying the way of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Billie Holiday, the way of Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang, Stevie Wonder, Prince, The Meters. I have worked with musicians from South Asia, from Hindustani traditions [nord de l’Inde] and carnatics [sud]. When we play together, we implicitly share references to these ways of making music. You can call it improvisation if you want…but you don’t have to! »
The secret of a good performance of “live composition” is in the mutual listening between the musicians themselves, then between the orchestra and its public, believes Vijay Iyer: “The people in the room, I can hear them listen to us. It’s a talent that needs to be cultivated, listening: me, in concert, I know how they feel, you can hear it. I also know that you can take the audience somewhere else, to a place they never knew they could visit. You have to make him live an experience, make him feel that what is happening, in concert, at this precise moment, is a unique moment, which has nothing to do with the gesture of improvising, and everything to do with the need to make the spectators feel that their own presence at this concert has value. It’s living in the present moment, all together. »