This Friday, Vijay Iyer is curating an afternoon of music and performance videos in loving memory of his late friend, collaborator - esteemed filmmaker Prashant Bhargava.

Vijay's curated afternoon is part of Act4Music's at-home music festival and it begins at 2PM ET on Friday.

Iyer selected performances from Tyshawn Sorey, Himanshu Suri, Arooj Aftab, Kassa Overall, Shahzad Ismaily and the International Contemporary Ensemble. The afternoon will include a showing of the film Bhargava made that was scored by Iyer - Radhe Radhe (ECM) - as well as a short documentary on the making of the film.

You can watch here: https://act4music.org/product/transcendence-in-memory-of-prashant-bhargava/?occurrence=2020-05-15

And watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/d7GM9x0pGoE

TRANSCENDENCE:

in memory of

Prashant Bhargava

1/12/1973 - 5/15/2015

"Prashant Bhargava (1/12/1973 - 5/15/2015) was a brilliant filmmaker and visual artist, and one of my dearest friends and collaborators. He lived his life cherishing every moment, amplifying the goodness and the joy around him. He had a keen eye for beauty, and he especially appreciated acts of beauty that stood in defiance of the abject human condition, like light into darkness -- or like the lotus in spite of the swamp, to quote Archie Shepp quoting the Buddha.

We loved Prashant because his struggles were everyone's struggles; because his exemplary ability to transcend them was his greatest of his many phenomenal gifts; because that transcendence is how we all get through our lives - by shining our own lights into the darkness.

The last major project Prashant and I did was a film with live musical accompaniment titled Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, which interweaves vivid footage of Holi celebrations in North India with a staged encounter between the deities Radha and Krishna. It was released on DVD/BluRay on ECM Records in 2014, and we received special permission to stream it as part of this collection, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his passing. The rest of the music presented here consists of individual and collective creations by phenomenal artists whom Prashant knew and loved. Thank you for joining us in celebration of our friend." - Vijay Iyer, New York City

Featuring:

Vijay Iyer / Tyshawn Sorey / Himanshu Suri / Arooj Aftab / Kassa Overall / Shahzad Ismaily International Contemporary Ensemble

Video included:

• Arooj Aftab / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile (recorded live at The Kitchen, 2018, 24')

• Tyshawn Sorey: For Prashant (solo piano, 2020) (21')

• Himanshu Suri / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily / Kassa Overall / Arooj Aftab: Kebab Uncle (live at The Kitchen, 2018, 47')

• Prashant Bhargava / Vijay Iyer / International Contemporary Ensemble: Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi (film with live score; released on ECM Records on DVD & BluRay in 2014) (35')

• plus "The Creation of Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi" (short documentary prepared for the DVD/BluRay release, 18', 2014)

[Note: Radhe Radhe and the making-of documentary are also available commercially on DVD/BluRay, but not in streaming format.]