The Vijay Iyer Trio live at KPLU

The Vijay Iyer Trio’s latest release, Historicity, won a number of "Album Of The Year" awards in 2010 and has been nominated for a 2011 Grammy as "Best Jazz Instrumental Album."

Pianist, Vijay Iyer, seems pleased by this recognition but not really fazed by it. In fact, during his trio’s visit to the KPLU performance studios on February 8, they only played one piece of music from Historicity—"Smoke Stack" by one of Iyer’s mentors, Andrew Hill.

The trio also performed their arrangement of Michael Jackson’s "Human Nature" (as seen in the video below) as well as an original composition,"Optimism," which is an as-yet unrecorded work-in-progress.

Between songs KPLU Music Director, Nick Francis, talked with Iyer about the power (and the logic) of the jazz trio configuration of piano, bass and drums, as well as his journey from the world of science, where he holds a masters degree in physics, to the world of jazz where, some would say, he holds the future.

Coming up: Swingin’ piano master Benny Green will be performing live on KPLU February 15, hosted by Abe Beeson.