"I like to explore the audible traces of the human body in improvisational music through rhythm, gesture, and physicality. I also think about the situated character of musical activity—the role played by its sociocultural and physical environment. These notions of embodiment and situatedness help us to critique the neutral definition of music as organized sound. We should understand music as something closer to us: human bodies in meaningful process, sonorous acts in an information-rich context, the sonic trace of individual and collective action." For pianist-composer-improvisor Vijay Iyer, creating music is fundamentally a process of inquiry. Drawing from South Asian, African, European and American music, and grounded in the experimental jazz tradition, he creates distinctive musical spaces in which symbolically charged improvisation, speculative sonic exploration, and musical narrative unfold. A prolific composer who writes in many formats—short and free sketches to long epic works—he views intensive collaboration as a crucible for aesthetic and conceptual growth and performs his pieces with a community of equally committed and original peers. His scholarly investigations on the role of embodiment in musical perception, cognition, and individual and cultural performance have fostered a vital synergy between his intellectual and political concerns and his on-going creative work.

Born 1971, Albany, New York Lives in New York City 1998 Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, special interdisciplinary program in Technology and the Arts, focusing on music and cognitive science 1994 M.A., University of California at Berkeley, Physics 1992 B.S., Yale University, Mathematics & Physics 1994-present: On-the-job studies with Steve Coleman, E.W. Wainwright, Roscoe Mitchell, Butch Morris, Amiri Baraka, others 1977-present: Self-directed piano, improvisation, & composition studies 1975-1989: Private violin studies with Nancy Hunt, Oliver Steiner, others

	2003	In What Language?, Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd, Pi Recordings (forthcoming)
	2003	Blood Sutra, Vijay Iyer, Artists House Records (forthcoming)
	2002	Your Life Flashes, Fieldwork, Pi Recordings
	2001	Panoptic Modes, Vijay Iyer, Red Giant Records
	1998	Architextures, Vijay Iyer, Asian Improv Records/Red Giant
	1995	Memorophilia, Vijay Iyer, Asian Improv Records

	2002	Creative Capital Foundation Project Grant (with poet Mike Ladd)
	2002	New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artists Grant
	2002	The Jazz Gallery (NYC) Composers Series commission
	2001	Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Composer Commissioning Grant (with Mike Ladd)
	2001	Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant for commissioned premiere in New York City (with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa)
	2000	Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant for commissioned premiere in Chicago (with Rudresh Mahanthappa and percussionist Trichy Sankaran)
	1998	Arts International Touring grant for the Vijay Iyer Quartet’s performances in India

	2004	Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation. In O'Meally, R., B. Edwards & F. Griffin, eds., Uptown Conversation: New Essays in Jazz Studies. New York: Columbia University Press (in press)
	2002	Being Home: Jazz Authority and the Politics of Place. Current Musicology 71-73: 462-476
	2002	Embodied Mind, Situated Cognition, and Expressive Microtiming in African-American Music. Music Perception 19(3): 387-414
	1998	Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Music. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley
	1997	Iyer, V., Bilmes, J., Wright, M., and Wessel, D. A Novel Representation for Rhythmic Structure. Proceedings of the 1997 International Computer Music Conference (San Francisco: International Computer Music Association), 97-100

	http://vijay-iyer.com
	http://fieldworkmusic.info