The Vijay Iyer Quartet trafficks in a surging, complex, mutant strain of post-bop, steeped in portent and incident. Led by Mr. Iyer, a relentlessly probing pianist, the group relies equally on the exertions of the alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, the bassist Stephan Crump and the drummer Marcus Gilmore. It doesn’t sound like any other band on the jazz landscape, as it confirmed at the Jazz Standard on Friday night.
Mr. Iyer began the evening’s second set by noting that the quartet was celebrating 10 years, and would take the occasion to play old material along with the new. (His history begs one bit of qualification: Mr. Gilmore is the latest in a series of drummers with the group.) Then Mr. Crump commenced with an ominous drone, over which Mr. Iyer played a ripple of glissandos. Mr. Mahanthappa articulated a prayerful incantation with his horn.
They were playing “The Weight of Things,” the same overture that opens their most recent album, “Tragicomic” (Sunnyside). And as on the record their modal investigation evoked both the early-1960s output of the John Coltrane Quartet and the Carnatic music that partly informed that output. Mr. Iyer and Mr. Mahanthappa have each made a serious study of such South Indian traditions: “Kinsmen” (Pi), an album by Mr. Mahanthappa due out this month, explores them deeply.
The chemistry between Mr. Mahanthappa and Mr. Iyer has always been the fulcrum of this band. Here they functioned variously as a tag team, a working partnership and a couple of evenly matched opponents. During “Brute Facts,” an older tune, they modeled two distinct approaches to working with a groove. Mr. Iyer’s solo was an entrenchment, full of stabbing accents that emphasized a quintuple-meter vamp. Mr. Mahanthappa skirled above in dartlike arcs, unmoored to the rhythm section except at strategic points.
Later on the two musicians played “Remembrance,” a haunting elegy that appears on their 2006 duo recording, “Raw Materials” (Savoy). They struck a similar mood with “Song for Midwood,” a sorrowful rumination for the full band.
The only piece notcomposed by Mr. Iyer was “Comin’ Up,” by the bebop pianist Bud Powell. Its new arrangement, also heard on “Tragicomic,” featured a prismatic two-handed piano part and an abstracted hip-hop backbeat. This was fascinating but somewhat static, nowhere near as gripping as “Machine Days,” an intense and lurching contraption that sparked especially powerful work from Mr. Iyer and Mr. Gilmore alike.
And on “Aftermath,” another new tune, and another vamp based on a multiple of five, the musicians moved from brooding quiet to a kind of superheated intensity. They sounded almost scary in their abandon but also firmly in control.
No comments:
Post a Comment