Vijay Ayer©Andrea Canter

Jazz composer/pianist Vijay Iyer has been awarded the $30,000 Greenfield Prize by the Hermitage Artist Retreat and the Greenfield Foundation. Iyer will receive the award at a special celebration dinner on April 1 in Sarasota, Fla. Established three years ago by Bob and Louise Greenfield of Sarasota through the Philadelphia-based Greenfield Foundation, the prize includes a commission of an original work of art, residency at the Hermitage, and collaboration with a professional arts organization to develop and promote the work. Past winners of the prize include playwrights Craig Lucas and John Guare, composer Eve Beglarian, and visual artist Sanford Biggers.  This year’s prize winner, designated for music, was selected by a jury including Linda Golding, past president of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. music publishers and founder of the Reservoir; Jennifer Koh, solo violinist and prolific recitalist; and Limor Tomer, general manager of concerts and lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Vijay Iyer brings to his unique jazz modernism a background eclectic in both its cultural and musical influences. Listen to Iyer and you can hear the rhythms and harmonies of his Indian heritage as well as the formality of European classical tradition and the freedom of American rock; the shadow of his mentors—Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis—is also ever-present. The result? Some of the most original music in 21st century jazz from a 40-year-old who Amiri Baraka described as “an oncoming phenomenon, already up to his fingers in the most advanced music of our wildly contradictory age...” 

Vijay Iyer©Andrea Canter

Iyer has received numerous commissions, grants and awards, and has topped polls as Musician, Pianist and Recording of the Year for Downbeat, Jazz Times, Jazz Journalists Association and many major media outlets. Recently he was named director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music (Banff Centre, Alberta Canada). 

On Tour, Winter/Spring 2012

Vijay Iyer has a busy schedule in 2012: 

• February 10, with George Lewis at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA
• February 17, Trio at Symphony Hall, Detroit
• February 24-25, Tirtha at the Portland (OR) Jazz Festival
• February 26, Tirtha at Tune in Music Festival, Park Avenue Armory, New York City
• March 1-2, “Sound of Surprise” Iyer Mini-Festival (Solo, Duo with Wadada Leo Smith, Duo with Mike Ladd,Trio, Tirtha) at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
• March 3, Tirtha at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus OH
• March 7, Trio at Lafayette College, Easton PA
• March 10, Solo at Averno College, Milwaukee
• March  14-17, Trio at Jazz at the Bistro, St Louis
• March 24, Trio at University of Florida, Gainsville
• April 7, Trio at Herbst Theater, San Francisco
• April 10-14, Trio, CD release at Birdland, New York City
• April 18-May 2, Trio, European Tour

For more information about upcoming gigs and more, visit www.vijay-iyer.com

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