Vijay Iyer, Tigran Hamasyan
Posted by: Iconoclast on 11 March 2015
These two musicians seem to be revered as virtuoso jazz pianists and regularly get rave reviews. Based on these reviews I purchased a few of their albums.
To my ears, with the exception of a few tracks, it sounds mostly like frenetic hammering and tends to get on my nerves really fast. As much as I try I just can't get into it.
I'm I alone to think this or are these guys simply overrated?
I guess I get why you have your reservations for the two. The music is not always as accessible as other jazz music. And they indeed did make also a couple of not so good albums / or very experimental albums. I appreciate Vijay Iyer and his talent more than Tigran. I have copied in the albums which I think you could start listening to.....
I guess I get why you have your reservations for the two. The music is not always as accessible as other jazz music. And they indeed did make also a couple of not so good albums / or very experimental albums. I appreciate Vijay Iyer and his talent more than Tigran. I have copied in the albums which I think you could start listening to.....
Of course it's not all bad. Both are capable of producing some nice stuff. To me Tigran's A Fable would be the most melodic of all their albums. I can recognize some emotion in there.
I guess what prompted my post yesterday was after listening to some random stuff off three of Vijay's other albums (not Accelerando). After about 15 min I just couldn't take it anymore. The hammering piano and pitter patter drumming...
Since I'm in a complaining mood...Nik Bartsch is another jazz pianist that I just don't get. His album Ronin was on a bunch of critics picks of the year list. It's basically the same beat repeated ad nauseam. Makes me realize that writing a pop song with a good hook requires much more talent than playing virtuoso jazz ramblings.
Robert Glasper who has some nice tunes also has that annoying pitter patter drumming going on.
OK I'm done.