Defiant Life

Two of creative music’s most heralded luminaries, composer-pianist Vijay Iyer and composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith construct powerful, uncategorizable duets full of subtle emotion, mystery, and spiritual intensity. Their music reveals the improvisational magic of the duo, the expressive individuality of the participants, and the ways that they can, as Smith says, “merge as a single wave, or a single voice.”

Referring to Smith as his “hero, friend, and teacher,” Iyer played in the AACM icon’s Golden Quartet from 2005 through 2012. Their duo, first formed in the crucible of that band, received sweeping praise for their album A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016). Nine years later, with Smith in his eighties, the duo returned with their spellbinding 2025 release Defiant Life (ECM).

As Iyer writes in the liner notes to Defiant Life, “This recording session was shaped by our ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year’s cruelties, but also by our faith in human possibility.” Defiant Life was named one of the best albums of 2025 by various publishers, including The Wire, Stereogum, Magnet, The Boston Globe, and The Arts Fuse, with San Diego Union-Tribune calling it "one of the most contemplative, understated and moving albums of the year."

Join us in Evelyn's café from 6–9:30PM for snacks and a cash bar.