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2025 Biamp Portland Jazz Festival presented by PDX JazzVijay Iyer Trio ft. Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey
with special guest Telemakus
There will be a pre-show Jazz Conversation and Q&A with Ashley Kahn for all ticket holders which begins at 7PM; Show at 8PM
Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently observed, “twining composition and improvisation is rightfully his most celebrated métier.” He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and music-makers from across the planet. But Iyer’s artistry finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.”
Over the years this pivotal ensemble has nurtured a remarkable roster of now-revered young musicians. The first longstanding iteration of Iyer’s trio, featuring bassist Stephan Crump and wunderkind drummer Marcus Gilmore, became one of the definitive ensembles of the 2010s. Their three groundbreaking albums – Historicity (ACT, 2009), Accelerando (ACT, 2012), and Break Stuff (ECM, 2015), received universal acclaim in the jazz and mainstream press, each one winning multiple awards for best album, best jazz group, and best pianist, and cementing a place for Iyer in the modern musical firmament. Their repertoire juxtaposed memorable covers of “Galang,” “Human Nature,” and “The Star of a Story” with Iyer’s intricate, soulful compositions.
In 2021, an all-star incarnation of Iyer’s trio with bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey released Uneasy (ECM), which was named one of the best jazz albums of 2021 by Pitchfork, The New Yorker, NPR, the Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. The group’s riveting 2024 follow-up Compassion (ECM) has already been named one of the best albums of 2024 by the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, and was hailed by Forbes as “a masterful work that overflows with beauty, feeling, warmth and sensitivity.” These two discs are the work of an ensemble that bears some resemblance to that earlier band—retaining Iyer’s attraction to dark colors, elliptical shapes, and plunging momentum—but there’s a more pronounced expression of equal say among the musicians, along with a powerful sense of shared purpose and a stratospheric level of attunement. The two newer recordings are also, in their titular implications and references, more overtly political, featuring Iyer’s compositions “Children of Flint,” “Combat Breathing,” and the memorial tributes “Arch” (for Archbishop Desmond Tutu), and “It Goes” (for Emmett Till).
Iyer’s ever-evolving trio conception, developed over 30 years with an enviable roster of state-of-the-art bassists and drummers, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle, Andrew Hill’s Smokestack,McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles, the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, Fela Kuti, and the Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms, and the expressive nuance of chamber music. The results, over the span of his trio’s five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, have not only defied the old categories, but created entirely new ones.
Telemakus
Telemakus is a 24-year-old Indian-American artist from the Bay Area, now based in Los Angeles. The self-taught pianist, producer, and composer merges forward facing jazz and fusion into his own sound. Telemakus makes music that unifies the sounds of his community and collaborators, including Flying Lotus, Butcher Brown, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, CARRTOONS, Javier Santiago, Nicole McCabe, Julius Rodriguez and more. His debut album “The New Heritage” has gained over 5 million streams, receiving acclaim from The New York Times and NPR, among other outlets.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Alberta Rose Theatre, 3018 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211-7036, United States,Portland, Oregon
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