The Bad Plus © Andrea Canter

It was just a few years ago that three young musicians with Midwest roots joined (or rejoined) together to create music that stretched the boundaries of modern jazz like elastic. They made two low-profile recordings before all hell broke loose with a big-label, chart-topping CD, These Are the Vistas (Columbia, 2003). And it wasn’t a fluke, as The Bad Plus proved with more commanding sets for Columbia on Give (2004) and Suspicious Activity (2005). The Bad Plus is a totally original, daring, and—above all—increasingly sophisticated melding of high talent and hot combustion. Bringing a quirky symphonic approach to an original and “borrowed” repertoire, this acoustic trio features Ethan Iverson’s gorgeous, percussive piano, Reid Anderson’s often-melodious, never laid-back acoustic bass, and Dave King’s far-fetched menagerie of percussion, all united in the spirit of true collaboration. Fortunately for Twin Cities’ audiences, those Midwest roots bring the “Surreal Brothers” back home for the holidays and their annual pilgrimage to the Dakota stage in downtown Minneapolis, December 26-28.

At least in instrumentation and compatibility, the Bad Plus resembles the great trios of Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and, in a more modern vernacular, Keith Jarrett. And if you listen for a while, you might even hear some homage paid to those masters, particularly Jarrett. Of their contemporaries, the Bad Plus sometimes has been compared to the very hot Swedish trio, E.S.T. (Esbjorn Svensson Trio), a group that fuses acoustics and electronics, yet emerges with a softer, less edgy result than their all-acoustic American cousins.

But American audiences, and particularly music critics, have expressed highly divergent opinions about this band, in part due to an overpowering urge to classify each new phenomenon into one genre or the other and to distrust rapid rises in popularity. Is this jazz? Is it rock? Is it serious music? Notes Minnesota native, New York transplant pianist Craig Taborn, “What they’re doing is honest, because they are not trying to appropriate a cultural thing…” And suggested Josh Weiner (All About Jazz), “The people griping about their success … are the same type of self-appointed jazz Pharisee who once thought Coltrane's ‘sheets of sound’ were an exercise in ugliness, who saw Bitches Brew as a betrayal, and who found Ornette to be a charlatan…” Says Bad Plus bassist Reid Anderson, “Jazz has always reached out to other musical styles and used them for its own purposes…There are some people who want to freeze the development of jazz and only allow it to be one thing and you can hear it in their music. The rest of us are just trying to communicate beauty through music.” One thing is certain about the Bad Plus—they sell records, they fill clubs and concert halls, and they are striking happily cacophonous chords with highly diverse audiences, including young rock fans, bringing considerable (and global) attention to jazz at a time when jazz could use more support.

Who are these guys who have graced the covers of both Downbeat and Jazz Times; whose story has hit Newsweek, the New Yorker, Esquire, and Rolling Stone; who in the confines of one year played the Village Vanguard, Newport Jazz Festival, and Kennedy Center; who are revered as rock stars throughout Europe? Anderson and King grew up in Minneapolis and jammed together as teenagers, listening to such bands as Mike and the Mechanics and Sting, and then turning to modal music and free jazz. Iverson met Anderson in college and the two played free jazz in area restaurants, hooking up with Dave King informally in 1990. "The one time we played, it was an informal jam session. It was 10 years until the band was formed," Iverson says. Going their separate ways, Anderson headed to Philadelphia where he studied classical bass at the Curtis Institute of Music and Iverson jumped into the music scene in New York, while King found plenty of outlets around home.

Ethan Iverson © Andrea Canter

After graduating from Curtis in 1993, Reid Anderson moved to New York, where he played with other up-and-coming musicians such as Mark Turner, Jorge Rossy, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and, yes, Ethan Iverson, and led groups at Smalls that included future star pianist Orrin Evans. He’s been the leader on three recordings for Fresh Sound, including Dirty Show Tunes, Abolish Bad Architecture, and The Vastness of Space, and has performed and recorded with numerous artists. Says David Adler (All About Jazz), Reid Anderson is “a bassist and composer of rare gifts who simply must be heard and appreciated by a wider audience.”

Meanwhile, Dave King worked a while as a session musician in LA in the early 90s before returning to the Twin Cities, where he is the Energizer Bunny of drummers, both in terms of his frenetic musical wizardry and his simultaneous association with no less than eight bands. In addition to the Bad Plus, most notable has been Happy Apple (Youth Oriented), with saxophonist Michael Lewis and bassist Eric Fratzke, a band straddling avant-garde jazz and alternative rock that has an immense following among the 20-something generation. Traditional approaches to percussion have never appealed to King, whose technique is described by Matt Peiken (St. Paul Pioneer Press) as relying “on incredible finger control to nuance his fills, which often defy the neat subdivisions of typical beats.” Similarly idiocyncratic is King’s collection of “instruments” that includes walkie talkies and children’s toys.

Pianist Ethan Iverson is the one member of this trio who can not claim inspiration from a background in rock music. As a 17-year-old high school student, the classically trained Iverson moved to New York in 1991 and studied privately with Sofia Rosoff and jazz pianist Fred Hersch. Iverson has been engaged in a number of solo and ensemble projects, the latter involving work with Mark Turner, Dave Douglas, Bill McHenry, Billy Hart, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and old jamming buddy Reid Anderson. His debut recording, School Work (Mons, 1995), featured sax legend Dewey Redman. With his trio, Iverson has released Live at Smalls, The Minor Passions, and Construction Zone (Originals) / Deconstruction Zone (Standards) for Fresh Sound, ­each cited by The New York Times as one of the ten best recordings of 1998, 1999, and 2000 respectively. Most recently he appeared on a highly rated recording of the Billy Hart Quartet. Iverson has also served as the musical director for the Mark Morris Dance Group, performing with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Yo Yo Ma. Notes the Penguin Guide, “Iverson is an original thinker and likely to be a very major force... implacably opposed to anything predictable, conventional or otherwise previously-done.”

Although as a trio, Iverson, Anderson, and King had not performed in a decade, they had remained in touch and were fans of each other’s music, finally reconnecting in 1999. Their self-titled debut recording (Thirsty Ear, 2001) made barely a ripple in the music world, and the follow-up, Authorized Bootleg (self-produced in 2002), similarly stayed below the radar screen. It was a 2002 gig at the Village Vanguard that sparked one of the most explosive power surges of modern jazz, leading to the contract with Columbia and the subsequent releases of These Are the Vistas, Give, and Suspicious Activity. Of the latest, the New York Times wrote: “The Bad Plus's fourth studio record proves that the band is better than anyone at mixing the sensibilities of post-60's jazz and indie rock....The Bad Plus likes to work with giant melodies, and in its choice of a cover version, there is no half-stepping: the band's take on Vangelis's "Chariots of Fire" theme starts with a groove and then makes a free-jazz monument of it. It has to be a joke, right? But listen to this slow-motion bomb in a dentist's waiting room a few more times, and your hearing might begin to change."

Dave King © Andrea Canter

The Bad Plus still consider the Midwest “home,” playing every December at the Dakota and occasionally coming in for other events, such as their October at Ted Mann Auditorium as part of the Northrop Jazz Series. Playing sets that typically include originals from all three musicians (sometimes including works in progress), as well as covers of tunes from all reaches of the musical universe, from Ornette Coleman to Black Sabbath to the Pixies, The Bad Plus continues to generate plenty of buzz and controversy—Is it jazz? Is it rock? Is it just a lot of volume? Forget classification. You do not need to be a 60s rocker or 21^st century adolescent technophile to enjoy the sometimes over-the-top improvisations of these monster composers and performers. Like me, you can be a 50-something mainstream jazz fan who wouldn’t know a Pixie from a Radiohead. And at a time when it seems inevitable that every “modern” band is adopting electronica, it’s refreshing to see (and hear!) an all-acoustic effort toward the same goal—creating new sounds, new harmonies, new ways of thinking about jazz.

The Bad Plus will perform for three nights at the Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; two sets each evening at 7:30 and 10 pm. Reservations a must— www.dakotacooks.com.

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