Qobuz Store wallpaper
Categories:
Cart 0

Your cart is empty

Vijay Iyer|Reimagining

Reimagining

Vijay Iyer

Available in
16-Bit/44.1 kHz Stereo

Unlimited Streaming

Listen to this album in high quality now on our apps

Start my trial period and start listening to this album

Enjoy this album on Qobuz apps with your subscription

Subscribe

Enjoy this album on Qobuz apps with your subscription

Digital Download

Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs.

A decade into his recording career, pianist/composer/bandleader Vijay Iyer is still a startlingly original voice in jazz. His dense and often knotty harmonic conceptions and his modal approach to melodic invention are idiosyncratic yet wonderfully accessible to listeners; his rhythmic conceptions are unusual, yet always swing, and his improvisational facility as a soloist places him in a very small league of jazzmen. Reimagining is another exercise in complex compositions where the notion of song is brought to the fore. Accompanied by his longtime front-line alter ego, Rudresh Mahanthappa, on alto saxophone, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, Iyer creates song forms from the place that is as far as East as from the West -- the magical and murky, imagined interzone, where the music of the Indo-Asian Diaspore meets the Western Jazz tradition. That is to say, these forms establish the next extension in both traditions. The beautiful loping "Song for Midwood" is a case in point. Where one can hear the influence of Jan Garbarek's assertion that space dictates the placement of melody, here, it is the situating of two minimal phrases in space that offers a new visible dimension for the lyric line to emerge from and return to. The nearly funky backbeat groove on "Immfogee's Cakewalk" offers the listener a foothold into an angular -- not dissonant -- sonic world where counterpoint, repetition, interlaced rhythmic assertions, and scalar invention all meld together into something that truly swings. And so it goes. Whether it's the chordal mode strata that opens onto the body of a tune so elegiac and sweet it is heartbreaking, as on "The Big Almost," or the seamless, nearly formless fragments that assert themselves into unified voices on "Composites," the effect is the same: here is a musician who is discovering as he goes, one who never gives in to notions of excess or mere vanguard speculation, but who moves purposefully into the process of discovery. And jazz is better for it. Reimagining is the sound of the mature Iyer, who is at once authoritative and inquisitive, finding and relating mystery as he uncovers it and, in the process, furthering the jazz tradition. Bravo.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo

More info

Reimagining

Vijay Iyer

launch qobuz app I already downloaded Qobuz for Windows / MacOS Open

download qobuz app I have not downloaded Qobuz for Windows / MacOS yet Download the Qobuz app

You are currently listening to samples.

Listen to over 100 million songs with an unlimited streaming plan.

Listen to this playlist and more than 100 million songs with our unlimited streaming plans.

From £10.83/month

1
Revolutions
00:06:32

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

2
Inertia
00:03:19

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

3
Song For Midwood
00:07:26

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

4
Infogee's Cakewalk
00:05:35

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

5
The Big Almost
00:06:41

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

6
Cardio
00:05:35

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

7
Experience
00:03:44

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

8
Composites
00:05:29

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

9
Phalanx
00:07:28

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

10
Imagine
00:03:43

Vijay Iyer, Producer, Recording Producer, MainArtist, ComposerLyricist

℗ 2005 Savoy Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.

Album review

A decade into his recording career, pianist/composer/bandleader Vijay Iyer is still a startlingly original voice in jazz. His dense and often knotty harmonic conceptions and his modal approach to melodic invention are idiosyncratic yet wonderfully accessible to listeners; his rhythmic conceptions are unusual, yet always swing, and his improvisational facility as a soloist places him in a very small league of jazzmen. Reimagining is another exercise in complex compositions where the notion of song is brought to the fore. Accompanied by his longtime front-line alter ego, Rudresh Mahanthappa, on alto saxophone, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, Iyer creates song forms from the place that is as far as East as from the West -- the magical and murky, imagined interzone, where the music of the Indo-Asian Diaspore meets the Western Jazz tradition. That is to say, these forms establish the next extension in both traditions. The beautiful loping "Song for Midwood" is a case in point. Where one can hear the influence of Jan Garbarek's assertion that space dictates the placement of melody, here, it is the situating of two minimal phrases in space that offers a new visible dimension for the lyric line to emerge from and return to. The nearly funky backbeat groove on "Immfogee's Cakewalk" offers the listener a foothold into an angular -- not dissonant -- sonic world where counterpoint, repetition, interlaced rhythmic assertions, and scalar invention all meld together into something that truly swings. And so it goes. Whether it's the chordal mode strata that opens onto the body of a tune so elegiac and sweet it is heartbreaking, as on "The Big Almost," or the seamless, nearly formless fragments that assert themselves into unified voices on "Composites," the effect is the same: here is a musician who is discovering as he goes, one who never gives in to notions of excess or mere vanguard speculation, but who moves purposefully into the process of discovery. And jazz is better for it. Reimagining is the sound of the mature Iyer, who is at once authoritative and inquisitive, finding and relating mystery as he uncovers it and, in the process, furthering the jazz tradition. Bravo.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo

About the album

Improve album information

Qobuz logo Why buy on Qobuz...

On sale now...

Keep Your Courage

Natalie Merchant

Keep Your Courage Natalie Merchant

Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles

Brad Mehldau

You're the One

Rhiannon Giddens

You're the One Rhiannon Giddens

Owl Song

Ambrose Akinmusire

Owl Song Ambrose Akinmusire
More on Qobuz
By Vijay Iyer

Historicity

Vijay Iyer

Historicity Vijay Iyer

Uneasy

Vijay Iyer

Uneasy Vijay Iyer

Compassion

Vijay Iyer

Compassion Vijay Iyer

Mutations

Vijay Iyer

Mutations Vijay Iyer

Compassion

Vijay Iyer

Compassion Vijay Iyer

Playlists

You may also like...

Getz/Gilberto

Stan Getz

Getz/Gilberto Stan Getz

The Köln Concert (Live at the Opera, Köln, 1975)

Keith Jarrett

The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow

Charles Lloyd

We Get Requests

Oscar Peterson

We Get Requests Oscar Peterson

Kind Of Blue

Miles Davis

Kind Of Blue Miles Davis