Vijay Iyer is a composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, writer, and professor based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the Downbeat magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014, he was jointly appointed with tenure to Harvard University's departments of music and African American studies as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts.