Vijay Iyer - Solo (CD)

Release Date: 08/27/10“Iyer’s first solo piano outing by is an unqualified triumph, idiosyncratic and highly personalized, accessible but also fresh.” Pop MattersWith “Solo”, Vijay Iyer enters the supreme discipline of jazz piano. His playing is permeated by the jazz tradition, the technique, disposition and colours as purported beyond the musical notes by Thelonious Monk, Andrew Hill, Randy Weston, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra. Yet these carefully observed influences are only the palette from which Iyer mixes his own new colours. He succeeds in doing this in a fascinating way right at the beginning – in an acknowledgement of one of his firt pop influences, Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” is harmonically and rhythmically reinterpreted by Iyer. Two Ellington adaptations are also phenomenal: Iyer revives “Black and Tan Fantasy” from the early Cotton Club period with Bubber Miley’s typical jungle sound almost in the original form in stride and ragtime guise before catapultin