Thereupon is the long-anticipated return of the all-star collaborative trio Fieldwork, which has been described by NPR as a “power trio for the new century.” This long-standing collective comprises three internationally revered innovators of contemporary music: alto saxophonist-composer Steve Lehman, pianist-composer Vijay Iyer, and drummer-composer Tyshawn Sorey. In the seventeen years since their last recording, Door (Pi), all three musicians have climbed to the pinnacle of the creative music scene and received universal acclaim for their work, each one significantly reshaping the language of creative music in his own way. Remarkably, as Fieldwork, the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts, as the group continues to redefine the possibilities for ensemble music-making.

The individual accomplishments of these three musicians are truly impressive. There is perhaps no other collective of musicians with such significant, longstanding ties to so many musical communities, including modern jazz, contemporary classical music, underground hip-hop and electronica, and musics from outside the west. Steve Lehman is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Doris Duke Performing Artist, whose last three releases demonstrate the expansive range of his artistry: Xaybu: The Unseen, features his international avant-rap group Selebeyone; Ex Machina is a major work for jazz orchestra and interactive electronics, commissioned by IRCAM and the Orchestre National de Jazz in France, and his most recent release The Music of Anthony Braxton features his long-standing trio with guest saxophonist Mark Turner. Vijay Iyer is a MacArthur Fellow, a United States Artist Fellow, and a three- time GRAMMY nominee. His most recent releases include Defiant Life, a suite of duets with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; Compassion, the second album from his celebrated trio with Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; Love In Exile, a collaboration with vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shahzad Ismaily; and the composer portrait album Vijay Iyer: Trouble, by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Tyshawn Sorey received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition “Adagio (for Wadada Leo Smith)” after being recognized in 2023 as a Finalist for his “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife).” He was named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow, and his works have been commissioned, premiered, and recorded by preeminent ensembles and soloists worldwide. His four most recent releases – including his latest, The Susceptible Now – feature his acclaimed trio with pianist Aaron Diehl. Simply put, these are three state-of-the-art musicians of staggering breadth and depth.

As Fieldwork, Lehman, Iyer, and Sorey take their music to an electrifying new level, setting the bar ever higher with rigor, daring, wisdom, and a unique aesthetic palette. There is an unmistakable debt to the exploratory, all- embracing nature of the celebrated AACM collective: all three members of

photo by: Lynne Harty

PRAISE FOR FIELDWORK

“A stunningly poised prog-jazz collective.”

– Hank Shteamer, Rolling Stone

“Heady potential resides in an ever more advanced articulation of harmony and rhythm, the stuff of complex metrics and intricate maneuvers. The members of Fieldwork all helped set the bar for this ascendant strain of experimentation in the music.”

– Nate Chinen, Playing Changes

“Fieldwork is engaged in a furious exploration of the edges of jazz with both rock energy and classical exactitude. It’s hard to call the result easy-on-the-ears, but man is it impressive: complex, powerful, brash, and involving.”

– Will Layman, Popmatters

“As exponents of jazz that subscribes to an idea of economy, summoning the brawn of electronica while avoiding its rigidity to maintain an energising, if not wholly liberating dynamic, Fieldwork, both band and idea is a unique, provocative proposition.”

– Kevin LeGendre, Jazzwise

“Tension and suspense are two key qualities…. An engaging and important release with new discoveries arriving with each listen.”

– Mike Shanley, JazzTimes

“True innovation never comes without a price, as the group moves well beyond its comfort zone, exploring previously untapped sound worlds…. A truly singular post-modern hybrid that draws equally from M-Base rhythms, Braxtonian structural theory and stark minimalism, Door is the formidable trio’s most expansive and challenging recording to date.”

– Troy Collins, All About Jazz

photo by: Lynne Harty

This recording session was conditioned by our ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year’s cruelties, but also by our faith in human possibility.” – Vijay Iyer

Defiant Life, Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith’s second duo recording for ECM after 2016’s A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke, is a profound meditation on the human condition, reflecting both the hardships and acts of resilience it entails. But at the same time, it also proves a testament to the duo’s unique artistic relationship and the boundless forms of musical expression it yields. For when Vijay and Wadada meet in music, they simultaneously connect on multiple levels:

“Our time together, from the moment we meet right until the moment we play, is most often spent talking about the state of the world, studying histories of liberation, and sharing readings and historical references, as a means of grounding ourselves purposefully in our present.” In his liner note, Iyer has transcribed such a conversation between himself and Smith at length, revealing a closer glimpse at the individual themes that inspired the album and the term “defiant” in particular.

Two of the songs on the album are dedicated to significant figures from the more and slightly less recent past – Wadada’s “Floating River Requiem” to the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, assassinated in 1961, and Vijay’s “Kite” to Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, killed in Gaza in 2023. It is within this framework of thought and reflection that their music speaks without hesitation.

From darkness, the “Prelude: Survival” comes creeping into existence, drawing the listener in to its gloomy presence. In what feels like pitch black, Wadada and Vijay sparsely add colour, filling the canvas with associative sounds rather than explicit images. Then, bristling with an iridescent glow that’s emphasised by high-pitched organ-like electronic sweeps and swells (belonging to Vijay’s instrumental set-up alongside piano and Fender Rhodes), “Sumud” presents the striking idiosyncrasy with which the trumpeter and pianist interact as they untangle a deep aural landscape. A “cosmic” quality comes to mind when confronted with the pulsations and sound tapestries that unfold in this music, recalling their last duo effort in title.

“We work from our individual languages and materials,” notes Vijay in his extensive liner note, as well as “our methods of aural attunement, and what I would call a shared aesthetic of necessity”. A necessity both urgent and peaceful but sometimes also violent, ominously stated in “Sumud”, then endowed with a celebratory aura throughout the “Floating River Requiem”, still doubtful but with silver linings on “Elegy: The Pilgrimage” and devastatingly beautiful in the concluding “Procession: Defiant Life”.

“The album is pure magic.”

– The New York City Jazz Record

Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith
by © Ogata / ECM Records