Over the next four programs, I will be featuring several groundbreaking, innovative pianists (more than four!) with both new and older albums. Today, I will be featuring the tremendous American jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, and specifically two of his albums from 2009 and 2010 for the German label ACT. Both of these albums see Iyer at the midpoint of his current career, and he is looking at his placement in the stream of jazz history. They both feature some compositions by Iyer, but mostly arrangements of other's music, ranging from Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, Thelonious Monk, Steve Coleman, Stevie Wonder, to M.I.A. The first of these, "Historicity", was his first album to feature his trio with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums. The second "solo", as the title suggests, is Iyer alone at the piano.