Vijay Iyer is one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of his generation. A composer, pianist, electronic musician, professor, and software developer, he is credited with taking jazz improvisation and composition to entirely new levels. A bandleader as well as a constantly in-demand sideman, he has led several distinct combos including Spirit Complex, the Poisonous Prophets, and the Vijay Iyer Trio, who all appeared on Memorophilia, his 1995 debut album on Asian Improv. Iyer has worked with dozens of acclaimed musicians including Butch Morris, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, and Roscoe Mitchell. In addition to leading bands, he has also recorded solo. 2003's Blood Sutra was hailed as a perfect fusion of Indian Carnatic styles, post-bop, and modal jazz. His 2009 offering, Historicity, was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Instrumental Jazz Album category. Iyer won a Doris Duke Performing Artist Fellowship in 2012 and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2013. The following year he was appointed to a full professorship in Harvard University's music department. 2015's trio outing Break Stuff was heralded as a boundary-breaking achievement, and 2019's Transitory Poems, a collaborative release with Craig Taborn, was hailed as a provocative statement from two of the world's most forward-thinking jazz pianists. That year, Iyer also recorded a trio set for ECM with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; it was released in 2021 as Uneasy. They re-teamed for 2024's Compassion.

Iyer was born in Albany and raised in Fairport, New York. The son of Indian Tamil immigrants, he began studying violin at age three and received 15 years of training. As a child he began playing piano by ear. In college he received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics at Yale, then attended the University of California, Berkeley to earn a doctorate in physics. He continued to pursue music, however, playing in various ensembles, and in 1994 he began working with Coleman and composer, improviser, trombonist, and electronicist George Lewis. In 1995, while pursuing a doctorate in musical cognition, he issued Memorophilia, which included participation from Coleman and Lewis, as well as guitarist Liberty Ellman in a variety of musical settings. He played shows in the Bay Area, and toured with Coleman and others, cutting his sophomore outing Architextures with an octet in 1998.

By the time of Panoptic Modes' release in late 2001, Iyer had a working quartet with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Derrek Phillips. Phillips gave way to Tyshawn Sorey, and the quartet released Blood Sutra in 2003. Also that year, Iyer worked with hip-hop's Mike Ladd and In What Language?, an examination of the often-dehumanizing aspect of international travel in a post-9/11 world. He continued working with Mahanthappa and Ladd, appearing on Mahanthappa's Mother Tongue in 2004 and Ladd's Negrophilia: The Album in 2005 before releasing his own Reimagining, also in 2005. He was back with Mahanthappa for 2006's Raw Materials and Ladd for 2007's Still Life with Commentator. Tragicomic appeared in 2008.

During this same time period, Iyer was composing for orchestra ("Interventions," 2007, with the American Composers Orchestra) and string quartet ("Mutations I-X," 2005, for the string quartet Ethel) as well as for theater (Betrothed, 2007) and film (Teza, 2008). He performed regularly on piano and synth with Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar. Iyer's 2009 release, Historicity, was chosen as the number one Jazz Album of the Year by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Metro Times, National Public Radio, The Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll, and Down Beat's International Critics Poll, and was nominated for a 2010 Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Album (Iyer's first nomination and the first for an Indian-American in that category). The Vijay Iyer Trio (with Marcus Gilmore now in the drummer chair) won the 2010 Echo Award (Germany's Grammy equivalent) for Best International Ensemble, and the 2010 Down Beat Critics Poll for Best Small Ensemble. In 2010 he also released his first solo album (Solo) and was named 2010 Musician of the Year at the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards.

Iyer kicked off 2011 with a new band called Tirtha, a trio with electric guitarist Prasanna and virtuoso tabla player Nitin Mitta. The group released a self-titled album on ACT early in the year and toured globally in support of it; the album appeared on many jazz critics' year-end lists. Iyer's piano trio with Gilmore and Crump returned to recording later in the year; they released Accelerando in March of 2012. In 2013, he collaborated with poet/spoken word artist Mike Ladd on Holding It Down: The Veterans' Dreams Project, and won a MacArthur Foundation Genius grant. Mutations, his debut for ECM, was released in March of 2014. Iyer had also been working with filmmaker Prashant Bhargava, composing and performing a score for a multimedia project focused on the eight-day Holi festival in Northern India. ECM released Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi as a DVD in the fall. They reentered the studio in June and put a new album in the can. Break Stuff, the result of those sessions, was released in February of 2015. Iyer was named 2015-2016 Artist in Residence at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and released A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke, his third album for ECM, in duo with Wadada Leo Smith in March of 2016. The following year, he delivered the sextet date Far from Over, which featured cornetist Graham Haynes, saxophonist Steve Lehman, drummer Tyshawn Sorey, and others. In 2018, Iyer was again selected as Down Beat's Jazz Artist of the year.

Iyer and pianist Craig Taborn both played in Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory for 2002's Song for My Sister on Pi Recordings, and worked with him separately afterwards. In 2018, they teamed for a live concert performance in Budapest at the Franz Liszt Recital Hall, improvising while paying tribute to influential figures who had passed away, including Cecil Taylor, Geri Allen, and Muhal Richard Abrams. The unedited concert was issued by ECM in March of 2019 as The Transitory Poems. 2019 also saw Iyer enter a New York recording studio with bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Their collaborative sessions were released by ECM as Uneasy in 2021. Also that year, he joined trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Jack DeJohnette for their trio album, Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday.

In 2023, Iyer, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, and vocalist Arooj Aftab teamed to record Love in Exile, a live-in-studio collection of songlike soundscapes created from couplets in Urdu poetry. Iyer returned to ECM for 2024's Compassion, leading the Han Oh and Sorey trio. ~ Jason Ankeny & Sean Westergaard

Linda May Han Oh (aka Linda Oh) is a double and electric bassist, bandleader, recording artist, and composer living in Harlem, New York. Her playing style on both instruments is fluid, intuitive, and vastly creative, whether she's playing bracing modernist music, exploratory post-bop, jazz-funk, or swinging straight-ahead in a hard bop setting. Her innate ability to seemingly stretch time signatures without losing her sense of lyricism or pronounced groove helped establish her as a first-call session and touring bassist. She led her own trio on her leader debut, 2009's independently released Entry, and did a five-year stint with trumpeter Dave Douglas between 2011 and 2015. She signed to his Greenleaf Music label for her own Initial Here (2012) and Sun Pictures (2013). While with the Douglas group, Oh worked with pianists Art Hirahara and Fabian Almazan and saxophonists Jim Snidero and Tineke Postma. She played on drummer Terri Lynne Carrington's award-winning Mosaic Project in 2015 -- the same year she issued her own Serial. Oh followed with an abundance of session and live work and released her fourth album, Walk Against Wind, in 2017. She played on outings with Douglas and Joe Lovano, and appeared with pianist Florian Weber's group on 2018's Lucent Waters. In 2019 she released her acclaimed Aventurine and toured the globe with the Pat Metheny Quartet. The group's travels resulted in the 2020 studio album From This Place. She was a key part of Matthew Stevens and Walter Smith III's In Common 2, and played in a trio project for ECM led by pianist Vijay Iyer with drummer Tyshawn Sorey; they released Uneasy, before Oh returned to her own acoustic and electric bass work with the 2023 quintet album The Glass Hours. In 2024, Compassion from Iyer's trio appeared on ECM.

The youngest of three girls, Oh was born in Malaysia to parents of Chinese descent who emigrated to Perth, Western Australia. She began playing piano before moving first to bassoon and then to electric bass. Her parents were pleased when her older sisters chose medicine (they both became doctors) but were less than thrilled when she informed them she wanted to become a jazz musician. They supported her decision nonetheless.

In 2002, Oh began playing the upright acoustic contrabass at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, where she graduated with first-class honors. In 2003, Oh was a James Morrison Scholarship Finalist, and a year later, an International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) Sister in Jazz. In 2006, she emigrated to New York and two years later won the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s Award. She completed her master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music in 2008, where she studied with Jay Anderson, John Riley, Phil Markowitz, Dave Liebman, and Rodney Jones. The same year, she played on Jon Irabagon's Outright album and Lithuanian saxophonist Kęstutis Vaiginis' Unexpected Choices. In 2009, she issued her debut, Entry, leading a trio with trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer Obed Calvaire. The recording received accolades from NPR and various other outlets. Oh gigged whenever she could, leading her own bands and appearing with others. Over the next couple of years, she recorded with Thomas Barber's Janus Bloc, Sarah Manning, Bastian Weinhold, and others. She also started going to a gym to build up her arm strength on the double bass. The reason? She played too many clubs where she couldn't mike her bass. The result was a change in tone and physicality in her command and phrasing.

In 2010 she received the Jazz Journalist's Award for Up-and-Coming Artist of the Year and was Downbeat magazine's number one Acoustic Bass Rising Star; she took second place at the BASS2010 Competition in Berlin. In 2011, Oh made the first of her recordings with the Dave Douglas Quintet and Fabian Almazan Trio. Douglas' Greenleaf Music label released her sophomore recording, Initial Here, in 2012 with Almazan, drummer Rudy Royston, and saxophonist Dayna Stephens. Oh continued working live and in the studio with the Douglas and Almazan bands, as well as with saxophonist Jim Snidero on 2013's Stream of Consciousness. Her own Sun Pictures, featuring drummer Ted Poor, guitarist James Muller, and saxophonist Ben Wendel, was released the same year on Greenleaf Music and was acclaimed as the work of a young master.

Oh branched out, working across the jazz spectrum both live and on recordings with Michael Dease, Greg Osby, Joe Lovano, and Kenny Barron to Chris Dingman, Melissa Stylianou, and Avishai and Anat Cohen. She appeared on Terri Lynne Carrington's widely celebrated 2015 The Mosaic Project: Love and Soul. She also appeared with Douglas and Lovano at the Monterey Jazz Festival, a recording of which was released on Blue Note as Sound Prints. She played on Art Hirahara's Libations & Meditations and marimba master Gwendolyn Dease's Beguiled (alongside bassist Rodney Whitaker) the following year. Oh released her fourth album, Walk Against Wind (her first using her full name, Linda May Han Oh) in 2017 on the innovative Biophilia label, whose signature is offering gorgeous, 20-paneled digipacks and digital download files in a variety of formats -- everything is recyclable. Oh played electric and double bass and sang with her sidemen Almazan, Wendel, and percussionist Minji Park, with guitarist Matthew Stevens and drummer Justin Brown each guesting on a track. The album was universally celebrated, prompting a critically acclaimed tour. The record also placed at number 22 on the jazz charts. (This is especially noteworthy for a jazz album whose contents could only be digitally downloaded.)

In addition to playing dates with her own band, Oh joined guitarist Pat Metheny's quartet alongside drummer Antonio Sanchez and pianist Gwilym Simcock. Oh made her ECM debut in 2018 on pianist Florian Weber's Lucent Waters, alongside trumpeter Ralph Alessi and drummer Nasheet Waits. She also worked with Douglas' group again on Brazen Heart, a memorial tribute to his brother.

In 2019, Oh released Aventurine for Biophilia. Its 14 original compositions featured her leading a quartet that included pianist Matt Mitchell, drummer Ches Smith, and saxophonist Greg Ward, as well as a string quartet. Her tenure with Metheny resulted in the widely acclaimed 2020 studio album From This Place for Nonesuch. She also contributed to Matthew Stevens' and Walter Smith III's In Common 2. The following year, she joined pianist Vijay Iyer's trio with drummer Tyshawn Sorey on ECM for Uneasy.

For 2023's The Glass Hours, she led a texturally atmospheric ensemble, balancing her own woody, acoustic and electric bass harmonies with tactile contributions from saxophonist Mark Turner, vocalist Sara Serpa, pianist Fabian Almazan, and drummer Obed Calvaire. In February 2024, the Iyer trio's Compassion appeared on ECM. ~ Thom Jurek

Drummer, pianist, composer, and educator Tyshawn Sorey is an expressive performer and recording artist whose work ranges from modern creative jazz and vanguard classical works to experimental rock. His keen ear balances a restrained approach using sparse, intimate, interconnected textures and tonalities with a desire for dissonant, noisy, frictional interplay. He introduced it on That/Not in 2007, alternately adding and subtracting elements with each subsequent album. The Inner Spectrum of Variables, a double disc from 2016, used an unconventional string quartet to explore Sorey's contemporary classical designs. On 2017's landmark Verisimilitude, he virtually erased genre lines between modern classical composition and jazz improvisation. On 2018's triple-length Pillars, he conducted a septet. The following year he released The Adornment of Time as a duo with pianist Marilyn Crispell. In March 2021, Sorey was one of three alternating pianists featured on saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh's Facets; the following month, he appeared on Vijay Iyer's Uneasy. Sorey also released For George Lewis that year, in collaboration with the Alarm Will Sound orchestra, and in 2022, he issued Mesmerism, leading a swinging jazz trio with pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer in a series of covers and standards. He followed it with the live, triple-disc The Off Off Broadway Guide to Synergism, showcasing his trio and saxophonist Greg Osby. Sorey rounded out the year with New Now, an avant-garde trio album with David Liebman and Adam Rudolph. 2023's Continuing was a return to recording with Diehl and Brewer. Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh served as Iyer's trio on Compassion for ECM in 2024.

Born in 1980 in Newark, Sorey holds an undergraduate degree from William Paterson University and a Master of Arts in Composition from Wesleyan University. He studied composition at the doctoral level at Columbia University and has taught at the School for Improvisational Music, the New School, and Wesleyan University. He is currently a Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

Along with leading his own projects, Sorey has been a regular member of trumpeter Dave Douglas' Nomad ensemble as well as saxophonist Steve Coleman's Five Elements band. He has also racked up extensive performance experience with such artists as Wadada Leo Smith, Misha Mengelberg, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Myra Melford, and Anthony Braxton, among others.

As a solo artist, Sorey debuted in 2007 with That/Not, followed by Koan in 2009. He collaborated on several trio albums with pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, including 2010's Paradoxical Frog. He has released several classical-leaning albums on Pi Recordings, including 2011's Oblique - I and 2014's Alloy, and in 2015, he was awarded the Impact Award from the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Arts Awards. The following year, he released his fifth album, The Inner Spectrum of Variables, which showcased his composition for piano trio and string trio. 2017's Verisimilitude found Sorey continuing to blur the boundaries between composition and improvisation and saw him become the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. In 2018, he released the three-part Pillars, and in the fall of 2019, he and pianist Marilyn Crispell released The Adornment of Time, a single 64-minute improvisation recorded almost exactly a year earlier at The Kitchen in New York City. 2019 also saw his participation in guitarist Lage Lund's quartet with bassist Larry Grenadier and pianist Sullivan Fortner on Terrible Animals, released by Criss Cross Jazz. Sorey composed and played on "In Memoriam, Muhal Richard Abrams" for Jennifer Koh's Limitless: Duos Performed with the Composers from Cedille Records.

Sorey's run of collaborations continued in 2020. He played drums in organist Radam Schwartz's sextet on Conspiracy for Positivity: Magic Tales and cut the collaborative Invisible Ritual with violinist Jen Curtis. In March, Sorey issued the digital-only Unfiltered, a two-hour, three-part suite for sextet. It was recorded in a single live-from-the-floor session at Firehouse 12's studio by Nick Lloyd and Greg DiCrosta. His lineup included vibraphonist Sasha Berliner, saxophonists Nathan Reising and Morgan Guerin, pianist Lex Korten, and bassist Nick Dunston.

Sorey worked with electric guitarist Mike Sopko and bassist Bill Laswell for On Common Ground, a freely improvised session inspired by the original rock power trios Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In March of 2021, Sorey was one of three pianists to appear in alternating duets with saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh on Facets. In April, ECM released Uneasy, a trio recording co-billed to Vijay Iyer and Linda May Han Oh. In September, he released For George Lewis, a tribute to the trombonist/composer with the Alarm Will Sound orchestra. Sorey returned to swinging post-bop in July 2022 with Mesmerism. A trio set with pianist Aaron Diehl and double bassist Matt Brewer, it included covers of tunes by Duke Ellington, Muhal Richard Abrams, Horace Silver, and Paul Motian as well as Great American Songbook standards. In October, he issued the live triple-length The Off Off Broadway Guide to Synergism with his trio and saxophonist Greg Osby. It also showcased standards, but they were performed as lift-off points for extended, often fiery improvisation. New Now, in a trio with percussionist Adam Rudolph and saxophonist David Liebman, arrived that December.

In 2023, Sorey was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) that premiered on February 19, 2022, at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. In June, the Tyshawn Sorey Trio (with Brewer and Diehl) released Continuing on Pi Recordings, providing a counterbalance to Mesmerism. In addition to a cover of Matt Dennis' standard "Angel Eyes," it offered readings of tunes by then-recently deceased jazz icons Wayne Shorter, Ahmad Jamal, and Sorey's mentor and teacher Harold Mabern. In February 2024, the drummer and bassist Linda May Han Oh served as pianist Iyer's rhythm section for Compassion on ECM. A couple of months later, Sorey won a Pulitzer Prize for Adagio (For Leo Wadada Smith). ~ Matt Collar & Thom Jurek