CD version. Far From Over is the fifth album pianist and composer Vijay Iyer made for ECM after 2014, and the first with his sextet. Known until then mostly for his acoustic piano trio, Iyer sets three horn players against bass and drums and writes ten new pieces for them. The music draws openly on jazz history, yet its rhythms come from much further afield, and it moves from explosive ensemble writing to slow, elegiac pieces.
The rhythm section is the heart of the band. Bassist Stephan Crump has worked with Iyer since the pianist moved to New York in 1999, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey had for years been the alternate drummer in his trio. In front of them stand Graham Haynes on cornet, flugelhorn and electronics and two saxophonists. Alto player Steve Lehman had worked with Iyer for more than a dozen years, while Mark Shim plays tenor. Iyer plays piano and Fender Rhodes. The album was recorded at Avatar Studios in New York in April 2017, with James Farber as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.
Iyer says he builds this music from the rhythm upwards, drawing on folk traditions, West African drumming and Indian classical music. Good on the Ground rests on South Indian folk rhythms and is among the most explosive tracks. Poles opens with solo piano, then the sextet splits into smaller units and regroups. Down to the Wire starts as a piano trio until the horns state the theme and drive Shim's tenor solo. Haynes's electronics colour the quieter passages, and the closing Threnody slows everything down. In his liner notes Iyer writes that local and global struggles for equality, justice and basic human rights are far from over, which is where the title comes from.
The record was received as one of the strongest jazz releases of its year. In The Guardian in 2017, John Fordham praised improvisations "that sound simultaneously inside and outside the harmonies". Writing in Rolling Stone, Hank Shteamer said that "the sturdiness of its design and the passion of its execution" made it "2017's jazz album to beat".
This is the CD edition, ECM 2581, first released on 25 August 2017.
