Open VISIONS Forum: Espresso - Vijay Iyer in Conversation with Michael Ciavaglia, "Musicalities: Scenes of Sonic Mattering" - Wednesday, February 1 at 7:30 p.m.

How does a quality we might call musicality emerge, in the most unlikely moments, from objects or actions that do not yet seem to belong in the category of music? How does ordinary experience become musical? In this presentation, composer-pianist Vijay Iyer explores some ways of understanding musicality and the politics of sound, shares real-time narrations of listening experiences, and offers some insight into his own creative practice.

Described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts, and he has released two dozen critically acclaimed albums, most recently on ECM Records. He is a professor of Music and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where he also founded a PhD program in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry.

Iyer’s research dwells at the intersections of music studies, Black studies, and the sciences.

Vijay Iyer was previously seen at the Quick Center with his Trio in Fall 2014.