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With “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 catapulting it to the modern day. In contrast, the late work “Fleurette Africaine”, provides the dazzling and historic key material for a musical study on origin, foreignness and identity, about mourning and pride – topics which Vijay Iyer, who is of Indian descent, has often examined. The almost rapturous, nostalgically lingering embrace of standards perfectly complement Iyer’s own pieces, which are bursting with ideas and colours. Iyer’s spectrum ranges from lyrical to hard-driving (“One For Blount”), from minimalistic to opulent, from consonant to atonal (“Autoscopy”) and all this is wondrously brought together into a harmonious relationship. “Solo“ is the most striking evidence: the most exciting, pioneering and intelligent sounds to currently come from the piano keys in jazz are associated with the name Vijay Iyer.

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