VIJAY IYER: Solo
ACT Music, 2010

SOLO PIANO – Mixing original works, standards and one pop cover, Iyer creates a whole world on this CD: an idiosyncratic, impressionist landscape like a kind of sonic Seurat painting, built up from tiny, discrete units of deeply saturated color. He reaches back to the origins of jazz in one tune, and then leaps into hypermodernity in the next track, but it all sounds 100% cohesive, points along an unbroken arc.

Fo’s Picks: 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10

1. 6:07 – 1980s Michael Jackson hit abstracted: tight spiral, rhythmic ebb/flow
2. 4:56 – Monk: gusts of notes swirl and eddy; the melody just peeks through
3. 4:14 – standard ballad blends impressionistic color and saloon piano
4. 4:50 – Ellington: jerky neo-stride piano style, Monk-ish harmonic touches
5. 2:06 – stark and throbbing, cold and steely: approaches, then fades
6. 6:38 – a hail of notes rains down, each one distinct; then a streaming flow
7. 8:29 – delicate intro, bright spirals, a brisk jazz romp and pensive diversions
8. 4:50 – gentle, deep, suspended as if floating freely in a solution
9. 3:37 – Steve Coleman: cerebral, complex, suggesting an abstract groove
10. 7:56 – Ellington: creeps through dark shadows and fog-filtered light
11. 3:03 – oblique yet optimistic, bounces and rolls through odd places

[ Fo ] 09/12/10