Vijay Iyer with International Contemporary Ensemble | UAE Premiere
RADHE RADHE: RITES OF HOLI | VIJAY IYER AND TIRTHA
Chamber ensemble & jazz
Thursday & Friday, March 30 & 31, 2017, 8pm
Past Event
Award-winning jazz composer/pianist Vijay Iyer brings two of his globally renowned projects to the capital. Join us for the Middle East Premieres of Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi and Vijay Iyer & Tirtha.
Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi. Vijay Iyer and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) perform a suite for three winds, three strings, two percussion, two pianos, and electronics, in live counterpoint with cinematic episodes compiled from footage of the eight days and nights of Holi festivities in Mathura, India. The result is also a ballet of sorts: a performative encounter between live music and film, between lived experience and myth, the self and the transformed self, winter and spring.
Vijay Iyer & Tirtha, Iyer’s fascinating three piece musical dialogue between jazz, Hindustani (north-Indian classical) and Carnatic (south-Indian classical) music. Featuring Prasanna (guitar) & Nitin Mitta (tabla).
“Radhe Radhe is both a testament to Stravinsky’s continued influence and a richly successful creative expression on its own terms…[a] visually and sonically dazzling collaboration.” – NPR
Listen to Vijay Iyer & Tirtha
Watch the Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi Trailer
[International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is] “one of the most accomplished and adventurous groups in new music.”- The New York Times
Stay for post-show conversations
Grammy-nominated composer-pianist Vijay Iyer (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) was described by Pitchfork as “one of the most interesting & vital young pianists in jazz today,” by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” He has been voted DownBeat Magazine’s Artist of the Year three times – in 2016, 2015 and 2012. Iyer was named Downbeat’s 2014 Pianist of the Year, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, and a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist. In 2014 he began a permanent appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts in the Department of Music at Harvard University.
In RADHE RADHE: Rites of Holi, composer and pianist Vijay Iyer and filmmaker Prashant Bhargava respond to Stravinsky’s Le Sacré du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) with a new work for chamber ensemble and film. ICE joins Iyer to perform his shimmering score in live counterpoint with Bhargava’s scintillating cinematic descent into the streets of India for the Hindu Festival of Colors.
Pianist Vijay Iyer presents Tirtha , an exciting and dynamic trio collaboration with two internationally renowned young Indian musicians living in the US. Pioneering guitarist Prasanna is a celebrated virtuoso of South Indian classical music as well as an accomplished composer in Western traditions. The prodigiously gifted tabla player Nitin Mitta has emerged rapidly as one of North America’s most in-demand Indian percussionists. Performing original compositions by Iyer and Prasanna, the trio generates an astonishingly full ensemble sound, achieving a natural and organic synthesis of traditions. The result is a 21st-century global chamber music that is eminently listenable and vibrantly alive. Iyer says of this project, “You can’t call it fusion because we’re not self-conscious about the ingredients. We’re just drawing from who we are as citizens of the world.”