Vijay Iyer: Trouble

Approaching its landmark 100th album, the Grammy Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by conductor Gil Rose releases Vijay Iyer: Trouble on its eponymous label, BMOP/sound. Marking his debut recording as an orchestral composer, polymath Vijay Iyer showcases his high-minded yet emotionally expressive approach to music-making with this collection of bustling textures, surprising forms, and pulsating rhythms. Vijay Iyer: Trouble comprises three of his holistic musical responses to living in times of struggle. Asunder (2017) employs an Ellingtonian palette to portray American life as “pulled apart, broken, anxious, untethered”; Trouble (2017) uses the violin concerto format to voice our unfinished quest for equal rights; and Crisis Modes (2019) speaks of an unease around rising threats to humanity via strings and percussion. Alongside Iyer’s meteoric career in the jazz universe, he has maintained a parallel life as a classical composer that has often gone unnoticed...until now.