A professorship and a MacArthur
Vijay Iyer has won wide acclaim in the music world as a jazz pianist and a composer, has an academic resume that includes degrees from Yale University and the University of California at Berkeley, and has published in a number of scholarly journals. And now Iyer, who in January will become the first Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts in Harvard’s Department of Music, is in even more select company. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today awarded him a prestigious “genius” grant. The foundation, which awards its no-strings-attached grants of $625,000 annually, recognized Iyer as an “ardent investigator of musical communities, practices, histories, and theories. He mines core rhythmic, melodic, and structural elements from a wide range of sources to construct richly varied, improvisation-driven solo and ensemble music.” It is that combination of interests — and his work as both as a music-maker and a researcher...