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A new preview from the forthcoming Vijay Iyer Trio album Uneasy (April 9/ECM) has been revealed. The piece is called “Entrustment,” listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMSApzbMhas
Iyer composed the piece “in tribute to this staggering intercultural monument to human spirituality,” he says, after a visit to the Gobi Desert to see Dunhuang - an assemblage of hundreds of Buddhist cave temples, created over several centuries from 500-1200 A.C.E.
Iyer also recently spoke to NPR Music about the new project, his first Trio album since 2015’s Break Stuff (ECM).
Uneasy features drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh and was recorded in December of 2019.
On Uneasy, he draws on the history of the music while continuing to push it forward. In the course of this endeavour, the political and social turbulences dominating today’s American landscape are reflected in musical contemplation and tense space. In his liner notes, Vijay elaborates on how today “the word ‘uneasy’ feels like a brutal understatement, too mild for cataclysmic times. But maybe, since the word contains its own opposite, it reminds us that the most soothing, healing music is often born of and situated within profound unrest; and conversely, the most turbulent music may contain stillness, coolness, even wisdom.”
Uneasy portrays this cast’s first studio session after having played together throughout 2019 – Tyshawn and Vijay’s partnership even going back to 2002, when they recorded Vijay’s quartet album Blood Sutra. They’ve worked together frequently since, including on two of Vijay’s ECM releases: the live film score from 2014, Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, and the landmark 2017 sextet album Far From Over. Linda May Han Oh is a more recent collaborator of Vijay’s, although their professional relationship has been developing for several years. A consistent guest faculty member of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in Alberta, Canada, the bassist has become well acquainted with Vijay and Tyshawn, the workshop’s co-artistic directors.
Uneasy, recorded at the Oktaven Audio Studio in Mount Vernon, New York, was produced by Vijay Iyer and Manfred Eicher.
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