Vijay Iyer Trio: Compassion – Heady, visceral jazz from musicians working at the very highest level

Vijay Iyer is one of the most lauded musicians in modern jazz. Over the past 30 years the prolific American pianist and composer has released a series of quietly commanding and highly acclaimed albums that embraces chamber, contemporary classical, hip hop, Asian and film music – and that reimagines jazz as something he prefers to call “creative music” or, better still, by no name at all. Iyer has won major awards and fellowships, including the MacArthur “genius grant”, and been a tenured professor at Harvard since 2014. He has serious artistic and intellectual heft.

Iyer has led piano trios, too, most recently with two consummate improvising musicians who are also composers both in and out of the moment: the double bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey.

Although Compassion is only their second album together, the three musicians have connections that stretch back many years, in Iyer and Sorey’s case for two decades or more. You can hear the group cohesion, energy and understanding.

Over a dozen diverse tracks, nine written by Iyer – there is also a spirited interpretation of the Stevie Wonder earworm Overjoyed – the music ranges across a complex Venn diagram of blues, classical, soul, funk and free improv, with a deep knowledge and respect for jazz (there, I said it) at its intersecting centre. It is heady and visceral stuff, a state-of-the-art trio working at the very highest level.