Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh, Tyshawn Sorey

Vijay Iyer presents a powerful new trio, in which he is joined by two key figures in creative music, Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh.  “We have an energy together that is very distinct. It has a different kind of propulsion, a different impulse and a different spectrum of colours”. Repertoire on UnEasy, recorded at Oktaven Audio Studio in Mount Vernon, New York in December 2019, includes Iyer originals written over a span of 20 years, plus Geri Allen’s “Drummer’s Song” and a radical recasting of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”

The musical genius of post-modern jazz pianist Vijay Iyer reaches new heights on ‘Uneasy’, his fourth trio album and sixth release on the ECM Records as a leader/co-leader. Having forged a revolutionary path in jazz, Iyer continues to break new ground, this time benefiting from the rhythmic wonders of a new trio with the drummer Tyshawn Sorey, a longtime partner, and the bassist Linda May Han Oh, with whom he recorded in 2011 for the Dave Douglas Quintet.  The music takes a more jazzified route here, in the sense that it’s intrinsically connected to tradition and form, detaching from that free-er and experimental side presented in his works with Craig Taborn and Wadada Leo Smith. […] The pianist also squeezes in the jazz standard ‘Night and Day’ and Geri Allen’s ‘Drummer’s Song’. The former, inspired by McCoy Tyner’s piano work in Joe Henderson’s version, flows in a peripatetic 7/8 bliss; while the latter number, a tribute to the late influential pianist and mentor who composed it, links African folk tradition with imaginative post-bop via groove. Many moments of pleasure come out from listening to this record, in which the virtuosity of the three musicians involved is constantly put at the service of the music.
Filipe Freitas, Jazz Trail