In three years, the trio has gone from jazz newcomer to being almost unanimously anointed the genre's next big thing.
By PHILIP BOOTH
Published August 28, 2003
The Bad Plus is the biggest story of the year in the jazz world.
Pianist Ethan Iverson, acoustic bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King have been called "jazz's answer to the Foo Fighters" in the pages of Esquire and "one of the decade's key trios" by the Village Voice.
Jazz Times magazine declared These Are the Vistas, the group's stunning major-label debut this year, "one of the most important jazz albums to appear in more than a decade."
Down Beat called the trio the top rising-star acoustic jazz act in its recent international critics poll.
The band, which released its first CD two years ago, played a week of sold-out shows at the famed Village Vanguard in New York in February. Audiences at major summer jazz festivals in New York, Montreal and Europe have gone wild over it. The band's first and only Florida concert, part of a cross-country tour, is Friday night at the Royalty Theatre in Clearwater.
How did the Bad Plus get so big, so fast?
It followed its musical instincts, Anderson said, letting its loud, edgy mix of jazz, rock and classical evolve naturally.
When the Bad Plus plays Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit and Blondie's Heart of Glass, it's clear the trio knows and loves the music and isn't doing it as a gimmick.
"Most of what we do is original music, but we started to look at tunes that were contemporary to us and to a good part of our audience," Anderson said in a telephone interview from New York. "It's interesting in approaching contemporary pop and rock tunes. There isn't an established way of performing them."
Wisconsin native Iverson, musical director for the Mark Morris Dance Group, studied classical music, as did Anderson. All three, united by appreciation for Ornette Coleman, the classic John Coltrane Quartet and Keith Jarrett, have played various jazz-oriented gigs over the past decade or so. But they also share a fondness for such acts as Led Zeppelin, Bjork and Radiohead, said Anderson, who has played in rock bands with fellow Minneapolis native King.
"We're very conscious of, for lack of a better term, a pop sensibility, a kind of clarity of presentation," Anderson said. "What we're doing a lot of times is some very advanced music, and sometimes very strange. But I think that ideally we're able to communicate that music because we're still aware of its parameters."
The Bad Plus is also adamant about not being categorized as a piano trio and all that connotes.
"It's a completely democratic organization on all levels, so that in playing and the presentation, we're not up there trying to please a single leader," Anderson said.
"We can all really be ourselves completely in this band. That, to me, feels like one of our greatest assets."
PREVIEW: The Bad Plus, 8 p.m. Friday, Royalty Theatre, 405 Cleveland St., Clearwater. $15. (727) 441-8868.
