Vijay Iyer — 6 November 2026, Conservatori Liceu (Barcelona)

Jazz

The pianist returns to the Barcelona Jazz Festival in the one format he had never played there: alone at the piano

Vijay Iyer plays Conservatori Liceu, on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, on Friday 6 November at half past eight in the evening, as part of the 58th Barcelona Jazz Festival. He plays alone: just him and the piano. The listing does not publish a price — the link goes straight to the ticketing platform — and Amics del Jazz get 15% off. Under-16s may only enter accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, with the venue’s consent form printed out.

He has played the festival three times before, always with a trio. The organisers explain the change within the programme for the festival’s sixtieth anniversary, which this year reaches its 58th edition: solo piano, they write, “is for us always an adventure, that of the artist facing the instrument with nothing but their imagination for support, with no external safety nets”.

The festival publishes no setlist and points instead to the recorded precedent: “Solo”, Iyer’s only solo piano album, where he moves from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Michael Jackson and his own compositions.

That same Friday, at half past four in the afternoon, Iyer gives a masterclass at the Conservatori: according to the festival, anyone holding a concert ticket gets in free. Individual masterclasses in the series cost €10.

Iyer was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2013 and has been a professor in Harvard’s music department since 2014: the afternoon class comes from there as much as the evening concert does.

Text by Aina Torrents