April 8, 2009
Contact: Sara R. Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195


AMHERST, Mass.— The yearlong Amherst College music festival Faultlines: Mapping Jazz in the 21st Century continues Friday, April 17, with a concert and performance workshop by Raw Materials, the critically acclaimed duo of pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa. The pair will host a performance workshop from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in room 7 of the school’s Arms Music Center followed by a concert at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall. Both events are free of charge and open to the public.

Both the sons of Indian immigrants, Iyer and Mahanthappa represent a new generation of American jazz musicians who are exploring the cultures of their ancestry through their music. Drawing on Asian, African and European traditions, they have performed together as the group Raw Materials for more than 10 years. Time Out New York describes their eponymous debut recording as a “series of confident duets,” which “combines stateliness with rawness... It’s like seeing two sides of the same coin.” All About Jazz was likewise enthusiastic, hailing the release as “a total triumph from beginning to end.”

Iyer has been described by The Village Voice as “the most commanding pianist and composer to emerge in recent years” and by The New Yorker as one of “today’s most important pianists.” He has released 12 recordings, most recently Tragicomic with his trio and quartet; Door with the collective trio Fieldwork; Still Life with Commentator, his second large-scale work with poet-performer Mike Ladd; and Raw Materials with Mahanthappa. His albums have been selected among the best of the year in dozens of major publications including JazzTimes, Jazzwise, Downbeat, The Utne Reader and The Chicago Tribune and he was voted #1 Rising Star Jazz Artist and #1 Rising Star Composer by the Downbeat International Critics Poll for both 2006 and 2007. A regular performer at venues around the world, he has joined forces with Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Dennis Russell Davies, among others. His numerous honors include the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the JJA Jazz Awards’ Up & Coming Artist of the Year award. He teaches at New York University, New School University, and the School for Improvisational Music, and has published articles in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology and the anthologies Uptown Conversation and Sound Unbound.

Guggenheim fellow Mahanthappa is one of the most innovative young musicians and composers in jazz today. Floating near the top of the Downbeat International Critics Poll “Rising Star-Alto Saxophone” category for the past five years, Mahanthappa incorporates the culture of his Indian ancestry and fuses myriad influences to create a truly groundbreaking artistic vision. As a performer, he leads/co-leads seven groups to critical acclaim. Codebook, his most recent release for Pi Recordings, was named a Top Jazz Album of 2006 by The Village Voice, Jazztimes and the Denver Post. In Europe, Codebook received the esteemed “CHOC DE L'ANNÉE” (album of the year) for 2007 in France’s Jazzman, 4 stars in the UK’s Jazzwise and the “Bollino di Marzo” from Italy’s Musica Jazz. As a collaborator, Mahanthappa has worked with such jazz luminaries as David Murray, Steve Coleman and Lonnie Smith, and as a composer, received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America and the New York State Council on the Arts. He holds a bachelor’s of music degree in jazz performance from Berklee College of Music and a master’s of music degree in jazz composition from Chicago’s DePaul University. He now teaches at The New School University and is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow.

The Faultlines festival includes concerts, performance workshops, talks and roundtable discussions, all free and open to the public, and all guaranteed to generate passionate debate about the nature of jazz and its relationship to American cultural identity. The festival is made possible through the generous support of the Amherst College Arts Series Fund, Amherst College Departments of Music, English, and American Studies, the Amherst College Mead Art Museum, the UMass-Amherst Fine Arts Center’s Solos and Duos Concert Series and Magic Triangle Concert Series, and the Northampton Center for the Arts’ A World of Piano Concert Series.

For more information about the Raw Materials concert and performance workshop, or any events associated with Faultlines: Mapping Jazz in the 21st Century, visit the festival website at www.amherst.edu/faultlines or call 413/542-2195.

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