Koncepts Cultural Gallery's 5th Annual Double-Up! Duet Series: Vijay Iyer & Kevin Mingus, February 8, 1997"The Oakland Museum's James Moore Theater was only about two-thirds full for last Saturday night's doubleheader of pianist Vijay Iyer with bassist Kevin Mingus and pianist Horace Tapscott with saxophonist Michael Session, but the 120 people on hand were treated to two superb examples of exploratory improvisation... 25-year-old Indian-American Iyer, attired in a brilliant white tunic and sandals, and 20-year-old Los-Angeles-born Mingus, equally but differently natty in a suit and two-tone shoes, began from a place of quiet reflection -- spare, angular notes and chords on the piano, long bowed tones from the bass -- and took each other on a sixty-minute journey through snapping funk, stormy post-bebop, romantic Gershwin-like rhapsodies, and sharp-edged blues... [They] achieved occasional mind-melding moments that eclipsed their obvious technical facility. Iyer, prominent on the local scene with his [bands] and his excellent Memorophilia CD, is a strikingly cerebral player who scatters fascinating, question-raising references -- Herbie Hancock? McCoy Tyner? Ran Blake? -- into his multifaceted approach. Mingus... has already developed an impressive mastery of the instrument."--Derk Richardson, East Bay Express
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| Chicago Asian-American Jazz Fest,
November 3, 1996
" Another young player from the West Coast, Vijay Iyer, set the stage on fire with his melodic finger work, drawing strong similarities with the loose and free piano playing of Cecil Taylor and the complexities of Thelonious Monk, combined with Indian influences." -- K. McCall & D. Sora, Nichibei Journal " Skilled musicians in their own right, pianist Iyer and alto saxophonist [Rudresh] Manhanthappa also represented two of the South Asian American community's brightest talents. The pairing of the two, Iyer from San Francisco, Manhanthappa from Chicago, seemed almost natural as the two played harmoniously on rich ballads and scintillating free bop sessions." -- O. Wang, Asian Week
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| Vijay Iyer's
Poisonous Prophets, March 3, 1996
"In the 1970s, the music of Iyer's Poisonous Prophets ... might have been called fusion. But during its set before eighty to one hundred people at Yoshi's, the band transcended jazz-rock by seamlessly integrating a wide array of influences, from Herbie Hancock to George Clinton, from acoustic and electric Miles to the stop-and-go time signatures of Steve Coleman's M-Base collective. With Bilmes and Kavee laying down funky grooves, Iyer swerving from judiciously-placed chords to cleanly-articulated runs, and Ellman injecting mostly linear solos and counterpoints, the group had no difficulty balancing dynamics or juggling styles. Nothing ever sounded forced or out of whack, even [the] trickiest time shifts, and the pieces, mostly newly composed by Iyer and Bilmes strung together in three long segments, appealed to both the body and the mind. The interplay was jazz-rooted, and Iyer is one of the most fascinating jazz pianists around... "But Iyer was onto something closer to the heart of the 'new jazz thing' when he explained that he came up with the name Poisonous Prophets because of the 'hallucinogenic' quality of the band's sound. These musicians are using all the musical resources at their command to distort time and space to alter consciousness, and allow new possibilities to manifest themselves with all the surprise and wonder demanded of jazz." -- Derk Richardson, East Bay Express |