Savoy Jazz presents the album version of the critically acclaimed oratorio about tv news, the blogosphere, and life during wartime, by composer-pianist Vijay Iyer and poet-performer Mike Ladd. Also featuring Pamela Z, Guillermo E. Brown, Liberty Ellman, Okkyung Lee, Palina Jonsdottir, and Masayasu Nakanishi. Co-produced by Scotty Hard. Original theatrical version conceived and directed by Ibrahim Quraishi. Released March 6, 2007.

“…these Iyer-Ladd creations are unfailingly imaginative and significant… Still Life is awash in “post-human” beatmaking but often pulses with lyricism. Ladd’s delivery is throaty, peculiar in the best sense, a hip-hop vernacular with highbrow dimension. Iyer’s deserved acclaim as a jazz composer and pianist also makes him noteworthy in a wider world of art… By refusing categorization in an overly rigid jazz field, these musicians further jazz’s purposes by ingraining its sensibility among different publics — one important way for the music to operate in the 21st century.” – JazzTimes

“The libretto’s tone often ricochets between elegiac and sardonic, with allusions ranging from Abu Ghraib to Dr. Phil. Much of the music is laptop-generated, a swirl of ominous textures and hypnotic rhythms… these elements commingle suggestively.
…the piece, with its uneasy resonances, holds up a fun-house mirror to our culture of information overload. And somehow the results are not just galling, but also often gripping. Like the subject of its critique, it draws you in.” – The New York Times