Vijay Iyer's Tirtha at Miner Auditorium, February 12, 2017

SFJAZZ presents Indo-Jazz with Vijay Iyer's Tirtha featuring Vijay Iyer, Nitin Mitta and Prasanna
Robert M. Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94102 USA
4:00 PM, Sunday, February 12, 2017

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[4:05 PM lights down, band out, Introductory comments from Vijay]

1. [4:09 PM] Tirtha
2. [4:20 PM] Tribal Wisdom
3. [4:36 PM] Falsehood
4. [4:44 PM] Duality
5. [4:54 PM] Abundance
6. [5:07 PM] Entropy and Time
   [set ends 5:26 PM]
    
   Encore
7. [5:30 PM] Remembrance
   [show ends 5:40 PM; bows and applause; then band chat with audience until 5:44 PM]

• Vijay Iyer: piano;
• Nitin Mitta: tabla;
• Prasanna: guitar, vox.
• Chiraag Bhakta: art.

I've been looking forward to hearing this group for awhile: part of that never-ending search for the next exciting thing, I guess. The show was certainly quite good, though it also defied my expectations. Somehow, I'd been thinking it would be similar to a typical north Indian classical show. I guess I didn't realize (until last night) how much a difference the substitution of western piano and electric guitar for the lead melody instruments would make in the overall sound, not to mention the fact that the Trio's approach is distinctly Carnatic (south Indian). Certainly all three musicians were well-prepared in their idiom; my ear just wasn't ready for the lack of tone-bending on the piano: all night long, I kept thinking: why is Iyer playing so square? And then I would remind myself that he couldn't bend strings like Prasanna. I don't mean to imply at all that I was unhappy with the show. Quite the contrary, it was great! But it took me about an hour to get in the groove and find a way to listen without getting stuck on things like the tonality of the piano – too happy and C-major-like! Or fake-sad minor arpeggios, meh!.

I was really surprised when Prasanna dropped a few repeats of the Nardis riff into the middle of Tribal Wisdom. Cool! Given that I expected the show to be wholly focused on expression of traditional Indian music, it was a shiny treat to all of sudden notice something friendly and familiar wrapped up within the foreign whole.

At some point, either Vijay or Prasanna mentioned that it was the first time that this band has played on the west coast, and that it had been about ten years since they last played together. Seemed awful good to me for folks who might have been pulling out repertoire gathering dust since that first outing! Hopefully they'll be back next season!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!