New York-based jazz musicians Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa are two of the rising stars in the jazz world. For over 10 years the two musicians have worked together, and also on their own independent projects. Their work  has received critical acclaim. It is not very often that you come across musicians from the Indian-American community that bravely went forth and embraced music as their profession.

In 2006 I was lucky to meet both the musicians individually and interview them in person. Both were terribly gracious with their time, especially Rudresh since I missed my subway stop and landed up at Coney Island instead of getting off at Brooklyn! I remember Vijay babysitting his little daughter and putting her to sleep so that there was some quite time to do the recording.

You can listen to the individual multi-part interviews with Vijay and Rudresh, and one where they both speak about their collaboration. Rudresh describes their first meeting as “bizzare,” where both were seizing each other up to see how Indian each of them was, and what they knew about Indian music. They were introduced at Stanford by jazz musician Steve Coleman in the late 1990s, when both were attending a jazz workshop. Interestingly, until then neither of the musicians had met each other.

Both musicians spend time traveling to various schools and colleges to talk on career days and help students (esp desi students) understand that they can make a career out of music. Both serve as important role models for a community that is obsessed with their children making a safe career option in medicine or science.

In this video clip you can catch a glimpse of Vijay playing that irresistible, foot tapping and catchy tune called Galang from his album Historicity.

Rudresh pays homage to his South Indian roots in this album called Kinsmen that he co-created with Indian saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath. Here is a short refrain from their track called Ganesha, where you can listen to the artists perform a “jugalbandhi” of sorts focusing on the western and the Indian musical traditions and how the saxophone is utilizedwithiin each of these traditions.