Excited to welcome the acclaimed US composer and pianist Vijay Iyer to OTO for the first time, for a very special two-day solo residency!

Described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation.

Iyer’s musical language is indebted to the great composer-pianists from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa, and the African American creative music movement of the 60s and 70s. March 2025 brings the release of Defiant Life (ECM Records), his second suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. The New Yorker describes their powerful, provocative music as “a two-figure play in which the exchanges involve mortality or impermanence or divinity.” In 2024 Iyer released Compassion (ECM Records), featuring his much-admired trio with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh. The New York Times observed, “It’s as if this band wants to both seduce you and discomfit you, stripping you of everything but the ability to think and see for yourself.” Other recent releases include Love In Exile (Verve, 2023), a Grammy-nominated collaboration with vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shahzad Ismaily; Uneasy (ECM Records, 2021), the acclaimed first trio session with Sorey and Oh; and Far From Over (ECM, 2017) with the award-winning Vijay Iyer Sextet.