“My music is always called "cerebral." It is a way of saying I'm Asian, and therefore everything I do is brainy.” WayMusic IsAsianCerebral Author:Vijay Iyer
“What we call music is what reminds us of ourselves. And sometimes electronic music helps lead the imagination to a space that seems outside of ourselves. But it never really is.” SometimesHelpingImaginationMusic IsElectronic Music Author:Vijay Iyer
“The thing about physicists is that they tend to think that everything is physics. I don't. That's not what music is to me. You can explain aspects of it in physical terms, including the physics of anatomy: how our bodies move, the torsional moment of inertia, the way you move your body to a beat, the inherent periodicities of the heartbeat, the gait. That's physics, too, I guess - maybe they'd call it biophysics.” ThinkingHeartMomentsMovingTermMusic IsPhysicsPhysicistHeartbeatAnatomyInertia Author:Vijay Iyer
“Music is made of what we do when we move, and we can only move in certain ways, in certain ranges of tempo because of the inherent constraints that our bodies offer, or you can call them 'affordances' - that's another word for me. It's a little more positive; doesn't make it seem like a limitation, but rather, a set of opportunities. You can say that that's part of music making, but there's also the imagination. The power of the imagination is kind of trumping - sorry to have to use that word.” KindMovingOpportunityImaginationMusic IsSorryLimitation Author:Vijay Iyer
“When I give a concert, I know they're not going to hear everything; there might be a lot going on. My individual perceptual and cognitive path through the music is just that: one path through music. My experience will be probably at some level different from other people's, and that multiplicity of experience has to be supported by the music. I might just focus on the cowbell the whole time - maybe I have a fever for more cowbell!” GivingDifferentIndividualPathFocusMusic IsMultiplicity Author:Vijay Iyer
“My concern with this approach is that music becomes a substance devoid of people. It's a consumer model of what music is: subjects listening to objects. For me, music is subjects listening to subjects. It's about intersubjectivity.” PeopleListeningMusic IsConcern Author:Vijay Iyer
“We think of music as this substance that flows - you turn on the tap, and there it is, streaming off your computer - but that's not how we evolved as a species. We evolved to listen to each other, and the reason we're able to listen to music in the terms is talking about is because we're really good at listening to each other. But this kind of technology has allowed us to forget that music is the sound of each other.” ThinkingKindReasonTermForgetTechnologyListeningComputerMusic IsListening To MusicStreaming Author:Vijay Iyer
“I teach a graduate seminar called "Theorizing Improvisation" that is pretty interdisciplinary, but really makes students deal with black studies seriously. A lot of authors of color, a lot of women of color - those become central to the intellectual trajectory. It considers music, but it also considers areas of thought that might seem unrelated to music. That's partly because we're expanding the notion of what music is beyond objects, beyond scores, beyond things.” BlackTeachStudyStudentsMusic IsIntellectualGraduatesImprovisation Author:Vijay Iyer
“I like the idea of the objecthood of music being destabilized by process and things like improvisation. That's what empowers us; that's how we make each day new as players, as people.” PeoplePlayerMusic IsEmpoweringImprovisation Author:Vijay Iyer