Vijay Iyer Trio: Colliding With The Jazz Dialectic

Vijay Iyer Trio: Colliding With The Jazz Dialectic Vijay Iyer Trio: Colliding With The Jazz Dialectic I'm no critic, so I'm in no position to declare anything an "Album of the Year." Or you could Beyond Standards Apart from the title song, Iyer's singular contribution here, the trio — bassist Stephan Crump, an Iyer associate for more than a decade, and 24-year-old wunderkind drummer Marcus Gilmore — take on three "standards" in this WBGO session. "Mystic Brew" was originally the handiwork of organist Ronnie Foster, though it has made its way into hip-hop lingua franca via Slum Village's "Fantastic" and A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation." Connecting Histories It's the cover — if I may call it that — of pianist Andrew Hill's "Smokestack" here that makes the case for the Viyay Iyer Trio's brand of historicism.