The Bad Plus is type-A positive
Trio of strong personalities comes face to face with Joshua Redman
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 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 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.”
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.
“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.
“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 upside-down, to see what comes out the other side.”
Driving that home, they have just released an album of alloriginal tracks with saxophonist Joshua Redman, called The Bad Plus Joshua Redman. On their current tour, which brings them to the Vogue Theatre at the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival on June 24, the Grammy-nominated Redman is an equal part to their exciting synergy. He also contributes two tunes to the new CD.
Redman says 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. Redman and The Bad Plus came to know each other on a series of double-bills in Canada.
“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 oneoff collaboration, they have a world tour ahead of them and King doesn’t discount the possibility of the partnership happening again down the road.
Ten studio CDs and two live albums helped build their profile as respected innovators, though King remembers there was a time when some jazz purists saw them as young upstarts with no respect for the tradition that came before them.
“We come from a place of absolutely loving every stream of jazz and we’ve spent time there. 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.”