Vijay Iyer Trio at SFJAZZ

Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, and Tyshawn Sorey performing in Miner Auditorium at the SFJAZZ Center last night (screen shot from last night’s streamed performance)

Last night SFJAZZ live-streamed the first of three performances by the Vijay Iyer Trio, led by Iyer at the keyboard, joined by Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drum kit. Sadly, I had to deal with another commitment last night; but the captured video was given a second streaming late this morning. As a result, I was given a second chance at experiencing the performance; and I was more than delighted to take it.

According to my records, this was my first opportunity to listen to Iyer since the onset of the COVID pandemic. Unless I am mistaken, the last time he came to San Francisco was for a San Francisco Performances gig in March of 2019, when he gave a duo performance with cellist Matt Haimovitz. That venture looked better on paper than it did when these two musicians based in two different genres tried to join forces.

Last night, on the other hand, everyone in the trio was “on the same page.” As a result, Iyer was right at home with individual compositions lasting for durations in the vicinity of half and hour, during which his inventions at the piano keyboard always found ways to back off to let both Oh and Sorey play out their own inventions. Taken as a whole, the performance ran for about 100 minutes. Nevertheless, any attentive listener would have been totally fixated on the immediate present without worrying about how “clock time” happened to be flowing.

As expected, Iyer put in a plug for his latest album made with this trio. Since I have not yet encountered the album, I have no idea how much of it contributed to last night’s performance. The overall impression was that immediacy was the order of the day, and I was happy enough just to be allowed to go along for the ride. If ECM gets in touch with me about the new album, I shall probably follow through on listening to it; but the operative modifier in the live-stream was “live;” and I was content simply to savor every moment in the immediacy of it all.