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Composer-pianist VIJAY IYER is one of today’s most acclaimed and respected young American jazz artists. He received the Musician of the Year award in the 2010 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards, the 2010 Echo Award (the “German Grammy”) for best international ensemble with his trio, and the Downbeat Critics Poll for #1 rising star small ensemble of the year. His latest recordings on the ACT label include Solo, released in August 2010, and his trio album Historicity, which was named the #1 jazz album of 2009 by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, the annual Village Voice jazz critics poll, and the Downbeat International Critics Poll. In the past decade, Iyer has won the Downbeat Poll in multiple categories, the JJA Jazz Award for Up & Coming Musician of the Year, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous composer commissions. Iyer has also composed orchestral and chamber works; scored for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated with poets and choreographers; and joined forces with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental, electronic, and Indian classical music. He has performed and recorded with Steve Coleman, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mike Ladd, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Amiri Baraka, Amina Claudine Myers, Butch Morris, Oliver Lake, dead prez, Karsh Kale, Talvin Singh, Imani Uzuri, Craig Taborn, and DJ Spooky, among others. He teaches at Manhattan School of Music, New York University, The New School, and School for Improvisational Music. His writings appear in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology, JazzTimes, Wire, The Guardian, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation, Sound Unbound, Arcana IV, and The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010.

For more info: www.vijay-iyer.com

Listen:http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2010/06/16/127891865/hear-a-new-song-from-vijay-iyer-s-upcoming-solo-album

Chicago born, Harlem based sound artist Matana Roberts is an alto saxophonist/composer/performer who works in various mediums of improvised sound and performance, and has been active in New York since 2001. A Vanlier and Brecht Forum fellow, as well as a 2008 and 2009 nominee for an Alpert Award in the Arts, she has appeared as a collaborator on recordings and performances worldwide with her own ensembles as well as with a variety of collaborative ensembles - such groups as Sticks and Stones, Burnt Sugar, Exploding Star Orchestra, the Oliver Lake Big Band, the Julius Hemphill Sextet, Myra Melford's Happy Whistlings, Jayne Cortez's Fire Spitters, Merce Cunningham Dance, and Savion Glover Dance. In 2008, the success of her leader debut, *The Chicago Project* (Central Control International), led critics to call Roberts "one to watch" (Kevin Legencre, *Jazzwise*) and "an eloquent, dramatic, tone warping free jazz artist right out of Ayler's anti bop tradition." (John Fordham, *London Guardian*) She has also recorded as a side woman on recordings with a large smattering of influential post rock ensembles such as Godspeed You Black Emperor, TV on the Radio, Savath and Savalas, and Thee Silver Mount Zion.