The Bad Plus is always innovating
The Bad Plus partnering with Joshua Redman
The Bad Plus Joshua Redman With guests: Kneebody At: TD Edmonton International Jazz Festival Where: Winspear Centre When: 7:30 p.m. Friday Tickets: $51 — $72 from box office (780-428-1414 or winspearcentre.com)
For The Bad Plus, innovation comes from within.
They became famous for their aggressive approach to covering Nirvana, Tears for Fears, Black Sabbath, Neil Young and Aphex Twin. Last year, they even devoted an entire album to Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring. But drummer David King says that from the beginning, the power trio he shares with bassist Reid Anderson and pianist Ethan Iverson has always done their own thing.
“It was more about the iconoclastic, Type-A leader personalities that the three of us have,” says King. “So the fact that we’re even in a band together is amazing. It was never our idea to put the focus on a few reimagined pieces. It was just part of our history to look at the pop and rock music of the day and improvise on it.”
Maybe it had something to do with their origins in America’s heartland. King and Anderson met playing in junior high rock bands in their hometown Minneapolis, Minn., before they came to know classical piano student Iverson at music college in his home state of Wisconsin. Their first fruitful basement jams happened around 1990 before the three went in separate directions, only to be reunited in New York a decade later.
“We didn’t have any grand scheme about changing the piano trio but in hindsight, we always had a desire to break certain moulds in ourselves and to stretch the confines of the classic trio. Fifteen years in, in all humility, I think we have a body of work that challenges the jazz piano trio at every turn. It’s not a piano-led band but a true collective.”
King says they have always made it a priority to reach out to their audience.
“We’ve been adamantly against having any charted music onstage, anything that could separate the direct pipeline of energy coming off the stage to the audience. Our attitude has always been about breaking the barriers between genres like rock or classical, but not in a way that feels touristy. Over the last few years, I think it’s been apparent that we’re much more than ‘that band that played a Nirvana song.’ We’ve always tried to reimagine things, to take the music on its own emotional terms and turn it upsidedown, to see what comes out the other side.”
Driving that home, they have just released an album of all-original tracks with saxophonist Joshua Redman, called The Bad Plus Joshua Redman. On their current tour, the Grammy-nominated Redman is an equal part to their exciting synergy.
He also contributes two tunes to the new CD.
No stranger to local audiences for past appearances here with his bands, Redman is quoted as saying the Bad Plus collaboration “has allowed me to explore a part of my playing and my musical heritage that I’ve never before accessed in quite the same way.”
The Bad Plus Joshua Redman offers some of the best music that either the trio or Redman has ever done, tuneful, lively and thoughtful at turns, but ready for wherever the journey takes them. The set even has moments of allout free invention and musical muscle that threatens to blow the roof off.
Redman and The Bad Plus came to know each other on a series of double-bills in Canada. When New York’s Blue Note club asked the trio to collaborate with someone for the venue’s 30th anniversary festival in 2011, the saxophonist was an easy choice. It worked so well they did it again, including a European tour in 2012. Last year’s studio date documented the altered lineup with new pieces from all four player-composers and remakes of two older Bad Plus tunes.
“The Bad Plus is a stubborn isolationist vehicle, very D.I.Y.,” King notes. “So we were concerned it might look as if we were backing him up. Josh was sensitive to that and became a team player in a way that surprised us all. I think he has really enjoyed being absorbed into a band.”
While the new album is a one-off collaboration, they have a world tour ahead of them and King doesn’t discount the possibility of the partnership happening again down the road.
“We come from a place of absolutely loving every stream of jazz and we’ve spent time there,” he says. “But The Bad Plus is a true expression of all the music we’ve absorbed over the years, through the lens of the improviser. We even had our periods as jazz snobs but as we grew older we loosened up a little more.”