Approaching its landmark 100th album, the Grammy Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by conductor Gil Rose releases Vijay Iyer: Trouble on its eponymous label, BMOP/sound. Marking his debut recording as an orchestral composer, polymath Vijay Iyer showcases his high-minded yet emotionally expressive approach to music-making with this collection of bustling textures, surprising forms, and pulsating rhythms. Vijay Iyer: Trouble comprises three of his holistic musical responses to living in times of struggle. Asunder (2017) employs an Ellingtonian palette to portray American life as “pulled apart, broken, anxious, untethered” ; Trouble (2017) uses the violin concerto format to voice our unfinished quest for equal rights; and Crisis Modes (2019) speaks of an unease around rising threats to humanity via strings and percussion. Alongside Iyer’s meteoric career in the jazz universe, he has maintained a parallel life as a classical composer that has often gone unnoticed…until now.
“I’m most at home as a pianist, composer, and improviser, but I grew up playing violin. From ages 3 to 18, I had classical lessons, played in orchestras and string quartets, and studied a lot of the solo repertoire. I taught myself piano in those same years, grew up on rock, pop, and soul music, and got into jazz in high school. In college I quit the violin and stayed focused on Black and South Asian musical approaches until my early 30s, when some friends in New York invited me to write chamber music. By then I’d developed the beginnings of a ‘voice’ by writing for my bands, playing shows, and making albums, and from my apprenticeships with Butch Morris, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and others. I finally wrote my first orchestra piece in 2007, at age 35. All these years later, writing for orchestra still poses a unique set of challenges for someone accustomed to real-time creation like me – but I find that the rewards are vast. As an American with roots in South Asia, enjoying longstanding relationships with Black creative musicians as well as with classical artists, I am at home moving among worlds. I hope this recording empowers listeners to embrace difference as if our lives depended on it – because I believe they do.” — VIJAY IYER