JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Rating: 
Vijay Iyer plunges us right into the maelstrom of South Indian classical music rhythms and modal post bop from the first moments of his release Reimagining and seldom lets up.
Reimagining is not for the faint of heart or for those who want pleasant background music. It demands your attention and engagement and rewards it richly.
Iyer is kind enough to explicitly lay out the rhythm pattern on the first cut, Revolutions, by playing it as an series of arpeggios on one chord on the piano, while saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa plays an angular melody on top. Then we get a series of different chords in the same metric scheme, but don’t be fooled. Although Iyer is mimicking the Western pattern of chordal progressions, this is not chord change music. The approach of the soloists is consistently modal. For example, in a section, Iyer might give Rudresh Mahanthappa the tonic chord alternating with a flatted 6th major 7th to solo over, but all Mahanthappa is doing is switching from major mode to a minor mode during his solos. As if all of this weren’t complex enough. Iyer, Mahanthappa, and drummer Marcus Gilmore play interlocking rhythmic patterns independently of one another. Fortunately for us, bassist Stephan Crump acts an as anchor on this cut, giving us minimal signposts that help us keep track of where we are in the rhythmic pattern. It’s as exhilarating as it is exhausting.
For the next tune, the aptly titled Inertia, Iyer pounds out the chord progression in a stately 7/4 with his left hand, with one chord for every beat, while the melody stutters off the beat with his right hand. The melody is constructed with nonfunctional harmony, simply extensions of the modes he’s using. Rudresh Mahanthappa sits out on this one.
Song For Midwood is once again a modal piece that, surprisingly enough, is based on the venerable head-solos-head structure that was the lingua franca of jazz as recently as the 1980s. The bass and drums give us the rhythmic foundation while Iyer gives a rhythmic counterpoint on a flatted ninth note above high C, like some bizarre version of West African highlife. As Rudresh Mahanthappa winds through the melody, Vijay Iyer increases the intensity employing the previous rhythmic counterpoint as a chord in the middle register, culminating in the piano and saxophone doubling a the rhythmic pattern, which has been subdivided into units of 2 and 3 beats. That is the structure that will repeat throughout the tune. In his solo Vijay Iyer builds a statement from fragments consisting of arpeggios derived from the central mode, always mindful of the rhythmic pattern established by the tune. Bassist Stephan Crump gives us a break from the relentless complexity by taking a straightforward modal solo.
As an aside, one of the factors that gives Vijay Iyer’s quartet such a unique flavor is that saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa’s style doesn’t seem to descend so much from the jazz tradition as from a classical one. He employs a plummy tone, frequently giving the end of his phrases a slight amount of vibrato, which is way more common in classical saxophone playing than in jazz. There are no overtones, no use of pentatonic scales as such. In fact, Mahanthappa is one of the few saxophonists I can think of whose style has nothing to do with John Coltrane or Charlie Parker.
For a change of pace, Iyer gives us The Big Almost, which is still modally based and built on cyclic rhythmic patterns, but this time, the emphasis is on lyricism, which seems to be bassist Stephan Crump’s strong suit. His solo is as lovely as it is straightforward. Then we’re back to Iyer, subdividing the rhythms, manufacturing short phrases from the raw materials of the mode being used for the tune. To be sure, there’s plenty of variation possible in the approach, but to ears not used to hearing in this way, it all starts to blend together after awhile.
After the density of so many of the compositions, Cardio initially comes as a relief. Skeletel chords are stabbed out contrapuntally, with the bass and drums in counterpoint. But soon enough, Vijay Iyer is filling in the spaces, increasing the density.
This seems to be a common theme in many of the young musicians playing jazz today. Miles Davis once said to Coltrane “You don’t have to play EVERY note.” In his younger days, the brilliant Cuban pianist Omar Sosa mashed together every strata of the African Diaspora he could think of, leaving little room to breathe. These days, he isn’t in quite so much of a hurry, and he gives his ideas time to develop. He even allows a little European classical influence in now and then. Then again, Sosa is not quite as exciting a performer as he once was.
I guess with youth, you get endless amounts of energy and ambition and the urge to get where you’re going NOW. That can tire out us older folks. But I’m getting off the subject again, aren’t I?
Reimagining is quite brilliant, really, fusing rhythmic ideas from Indian classical music with modal jazz in a heady, aggressive stew. After listening to Reimagining, you’re guaranteed to be stimulated, have a headache, or both.
