To spark discussion, the Walker invites Twin Cities artists and critics to write reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Here, writer Jon Morgan shares his perspective on the recent performance of Blind Spot by Vijay Iyer and Teju Cole, copresented by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series.
While Blind Spot partially references an ophthalmological condition writer Teju Cole suffered shortly after his novel Open City was published, it could just as easily be a metaphor for something unseen just beyond our focus. With this in mind, Thursday evening’s presentation of Cole, a writer clearly intent on honing in on what may be occurring just outside the lens, alongside pianist Vijay Iyer, another intrepid seeker, is an inspired pairing. In addition to sharing a restless muse, Cole and Iyer are both highly cerebral, esoteric, and thought-provoking artists that somehow remain viscerally accessible and unconventionally lyrical. Similarly, neither artist seems particularly interested in looking back or continuing to mine a vein that has previously proven abundant. Instead, each new project appears to represent a logical extension of the continuum rather than a rehashing of the past.
The first set found Iyer, along with a quartet of members from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, presenting excerpts from two of his chamber works, 2005’s Mutations (which has appeared on an ECM recording of the same name) and the presently unreleased Time, Place, Action from 2014. Over the past 20 years, Iyer has asserted himself as one of the most significant pianists/composers of his generation. Like peers Jason Moran and Brad Mehldau, he has a formidable trio to work with, but he also draws inspiration from a plethora of other collaborations, such as a recent duo with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, projects with poet Mike Ladd, or working with Rudresh Mahanthappa, as well as his newly formed sextet. Iyer’s discography, which consists of around 20 releases, is full of consistently ambitious projects that suggest an artist committed to continual exploration and growth.
Iyer’s chamber pieces, not unlike his jazz compositions, pair an unusually active rhythmic concept with shifting melodies full of knotty harmonies that disorient and distort the sense of time. Yet, they somehow remain asymmetrically grooving and playful. If one is familiar with his trio music, which is full of agile lines that tumble and prod over a thorny and moody rhythm section, it was possible to hear the transfiguration in the chamber pieces as strident and jagged strings darted around the music’s center, at times sounding like a 78 rpm record played on a slightly off-speed Victrola. Both pieces were shifting perpetually, at times poignant and haunting, but occasionally fragmented and harrowing, and like Cole’s work, seemed intent on examining the possibilities of human interaction.
For the second set, Iyer remained on stage, along with mallet percussionist Patricia Brennan and cellist Okkyung Lee, to provide a live score to Cole’s latest work Blind Spot, a collection of texts accompanying his photographic images. As with Iyer, Cole seems reluctant to repeat himself, and followed up his critically acclaimed novel Open City with a novella, as well as a collection of essays prior to publishing Blind Spot. What Cole’s four works share is a narrative perspective that reveals an extremely sensitive observer of the human condition.
It has been suggested that several hall of fame athletes gained competitive advantage from an uncanny ability to slow down time ever so slightly, which provided an ability to interpret the spin on the laces of a baseball traveling 90-plus miles an hour or offered that extra millisecond necessary to anticipate where an opening might be amongst defenders. Cole seems to also possess this aptitude, for while his photographs at first appear to be mere snapshots, akin to preserving moments of his travel itinerary for posterity, the accompanying story he tells suggests a much deeper observation and sense of continual questioning. Instead of scenic overlooks, Cole’s images are taken from coffee shops, city streets, or corporate break rooms, where he ruminates about his subject’s motivations, sense of place on the planet, or the ensuing tumult around them.
The accompaniment provided by Iyer, Brennan, and Lee appeared to be spontaneous, although may have been done with a preconceived score using Cole’s visuals and texts as reference points. Regardless, the music provided an empathetic backdrop to Cole’s narration, not surprisingly given the extensive improvising backgrounds of the trio. Brennan’s tasteful use of mallets and bows on the vibraphone offered a variety of undercurrents as Lee playfully plucked her strings while her left hand ran assiduously over the fingerboard. Iyer offered angular assertions on the piano, alternating brief melodic kernels with more frenetic runs, and seemed to influence the music’s flow based on his intervallic choices.
Rather than a sense of limited vision, the music of the evening suggested that Iyer, Cole, and company, on the contrary, share an elevated sense of intuition and awareness, and are completely tuned in to the numerous stimuli within the world surrounding them.
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