Today we have an Indian jazz musician who is/was tremendously successful. Vijay Iyer ,born in 1971 is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, electronic musician, and writer based in New York. He is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. He became the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts (in the Department of Music) at Harvard University in early 2014.

Iyer performs around the world with ensembles, most frequently in his trio with Stephen Crump and Marcus Gilmore,featured on three albums: Break Stuff (2015, ECM), Accelerando (2012, ACT) and Historicity (2009, ACT).In 2003, Iyer premiered his first collaboration with poet-producer-performer Mike Ladd, In What Language?, a song cycle about airports, fear, and surveillance before and after 9/11, commissioned by the Asia Society.

Born in Albany and raised in Fairport, New York,Iyer is the son of Indian Tamil immigrants to the United States.He received 15 years of Western classical training on violin beginning at the age of 3. He began playing the piano by ear in his childhood and is mostly self-taught on that instrument. He received the Echo jazz award in 2010, Alpert music awards in 2003 amd the Doris Duke award in 2012.

~jazz lovers stay tuned as I’ll be posting more~