Keyboardist's creative journey stops here

Nobody could call Bay Area pianist/composer Vijay Iyer a slacker.

As a keyboardist with the range, taste, and atmospheric aplomb of a Bill Evans and a Brian Eno, he is unbound. Since his 1995 debut, Memorophilia, Iyer has maintained a steadily protean schedule of collaborations, bands (one of which, Fieldwork, comes to Philly for the entire weekend), and compositional and orchestration projects that would make James Franco look lazy. So busy has Iyer been in those settings that it wasn't until 2010 that he released his aptly titled Solo.

"I do place a lot of faith in collaboration, though to be honest I continue with all of these projects in parallel," Iyer says. "I've learned a lot in the course of my solo concerts . . . so much so that it's transformed the way I work in an ensemble. So in the best circumstances, these two opposing tendencies - the inward-directed journey and the collaborative building process - influence and propel each other."

Along the way, Iyer has made many stops in Philly, including a Painted Bride residency and last year's Live Arts Festival performance of Release at the Eastern State Penitentiary. "Honestly, it's taken a while to develop a presence anywhere outside of New York. I guess over time people start letting you return to a place."

No return to Philly is more welcome and comes with greater breadth than this weekend's Fieldwork project with saxophonist Steve Lehman and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Each member of the power trio will be represented in a manner outside Fieldwork (for example, Sorey's ensemble will perform an original work, "For Kathy Change," Friday night).

Ever the juggler, Iyer is currently releasing Tirtha - a cool mix of bebop, raga, and chamber-pop - with his band of the same name. Like Tirtha, Iyer's Fieldwork is a nervously energized, genre-shifting rock-out whose only similarity is the collaborative element. "The presence of multiple composer-improvisers contributing to and guiding the ensemble means that neither is an ego-driven project, and both are concerned with process and risk instead of perfectionism and showboating," says Iyer.

Mention to Iyer that Fieldwork's buoyant blend of modern jazz, dirty hip-hop, African and South Asian tones, and bugged-out electronica is an amazing mix, and he laughs. "Hot messes are the best kind. Because we all compose for the group and we all develop the material collaboratively, it has its own mysterious identity that is simultaneously all of us and something else entirely. It kind of works like a Ouija board."

For Fieldwork's Saturday performance, the trio will play music from its past albums (especially 2008's Door), material it has developed in the last few years, and some new things. "I imagine we'll surprise ourselves," says Iyer, who insists you get there for the entire weekend of shows. "Each concert is different enough from the others that you can come to all of them and not ever have to think, 'Oh, there's that trick again.' "