PREVIEW: Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer at Union College
10/18 @ Union College Memorial Chapel, Schenectady
Photo by Juergen Frank and OGATA
“Let’s say that he’s still here.”
That’s the reassurance Grammy-nominated, MacArthur Fellowship-recipient, and Albany-born composer and pianist Vijay Iyer has these days, a comfort afforded by the equally-lauded American photographer Carrie Mae Weems after she called Iyer following the loss of his father in 2021. And it’s this reassurance, a strong belief in the power of collective grieving, and partnership with his decades-long collaborator, Grammy-winning violinist Jennifer Koh (who lost her own father in 2023) that led him to compose the multi-part duet for piano and violin, Scenes of Living and Dying, which will be performed by Iyer and Koh at Union College’s Memorial Chapel on October 18.
Explaining the roots of the composition, Iyer says, “[Weems] left me a voicemail and she said, ‘When I lost my father, I was so distraught I wanted to die. Then one day, I looked in the mirror (I was brushing my teeth), and I saw his face.’”
Lest the piece sound morbid, Iyer is quick to clarify that Scenes is, rather, about a variety of moods and encounters with existential experiences.
“When my daughter was born, I realized something about living that I hadn't known. When I gave [the piece] this title, it wasn't just about grief, it was also about when a life departs, you ask the same question: where is it on the other side? And it's the same.”
Koh picks up on this thread, continuing, “The interesting thing is in Korean, the verb you use to say someone's passed away is that they’ve returned. It’s not an end.”
Iyer and Koh’s collaborative relationship dates back to 2011, when Iyer’s work was being considered for a grant by a panel of other musicians, including Koh.
“I remember listening to his music and I was like, this is one of the most interesting and compelling things I've heard,” she glowingly shares.
Worried it would be improper to make personal contact with Iyer herself, Koh waited exactly 366 days after the grant was awarded to him before reaching out by phone.
Since then, Iyer has written a number of works for Koh, including Trouble, a concerto that responds to, among other things, the story of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American man beaten to death by two white men in Detroit in 1982. (Koh’s recording of Trouble with Timothy Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble was released in August of this year.)
That the nature of existence is defined more by questions than answers was a compositional starting point for Iyer. Scenes makes heavy use of indeterminacy, unspecified elements of composition to be decided by the performers, often spontaneously. Early on in Part 1, Iyer presents the violinist with a collection of pitches and directs them to “choose single notes or pairs of notes from this collection & play them any way [they] like” over an accompanying piano ostinato. Later on, the order of pitches for a melody is given, but without specific rhythms. Not only has Iyer composed musical analogs of the work’s philosophical themes, he also says that the “modularity” of the work helps to lighten its mood.
Adding to the backstory of the piece is the fact that Scenes was workshopped at the Watermill Center on Long Island, a space founded by the legendary artist Robert Wilson, best known for his work directing theatre and opera. Wilson, with composer Philip Glass and choreographer Lucinda Childs, created the polarizing 1976 opera, Einstein On The Beach. Koh performed as Einstein on the most recent world tour of the opera and formed a close bond with Wilson. When he died in 2025, Koh felt as though she’d lost a soulmate.
Part 1 of Scenes had its premiere in November of 2024 at the Kennedy Center, accompanied by a video montage created by Weems herself.
“[Weems] whipped up a kind of test video — it bizarrely fit the music perfectly—that we used as part of the performance at the premiere,” Koh recalls.
Part 2 (co-commissioned by Capital Region Classical, presenters of the Union College performance), will receive its world premiere in Philadelphia just two days before the work arrives in Schenectady alongside other pieces by Iyer and Bach’s Partita in D minor for solo violin. The October 18 concert will not feature Weems’ video, but both Iyer and Koh are hoping that a more complete presentation of both parts, including finalized videos, will come to fruition in the future.
“We’re working on a larger project, if anybody would like to give us money to keep the development [going],” Koh half-jokes.
As for their pitch to potential audience members — whom the duo recognizes as potentially dealing with their own grief, given the current American sociopolitical climate — Koh offers this: “I think there's something comforting about knowing that you don't have to travel this path alone.”
Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer will perform Scenes of Living and Dying, Parts 1 & 2 and other works at the Union College Memorial Chapel in Schenectady on Sunday, October 18, 3PM. For tickets, visit: https://capitalregionclassical.org/product/jennifer-koh-vijay-iyer/.
