Musical Alchemy

“This next act has raised the question ‘What is jazz?’ It’s a debate we’ll probably be having for the next 300 years,” emcee Jeff Levenson said. He paused, then added what sounded like a dig: “Listen and decide for yourself.”

It was June 19, 2006, and he was introducing The Bad Plus’s Carnegie Hall debut—part of a five-act bill celebrating New York’s legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. Despite three studio releases, one live album, and relentless touring, the band was still the new kid on the program, alongside legend Paul Motian and hot star Roy Hargrove. Some artists would have been fuming at Levenson’s introduction, but The Bad Plus did what it does best: It brought down the house—and earned the evening’s only full standing ovation.

“You can tell we’re present, and we’re throwing down like it’s the last notes we’re ever going to play,” says drummer David King of the band’s live gigs. “Because people have paid money and taken time out of their lives to support our music and our art.”

“Throwing down” like a rock band and covering the likes of Queen, Nirvana, and the Pixies, the acoustic trio—bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and King—have ruffled some jazz feathers. They’ve also achieved—by jazz standards at least—substantial commercial success, reaching out to rock audiences while dazzling serious jazz-heads.

“Most people, when they see us live, tend to be won over,” Iverson says. “That’s what I felt we did at Carnegie Hall that night. It was really a hardcore jazz audience.”

Seeing The Bad Plus is finding yourself in the middle of some wild musical alchemy. The trio takes melodic compositions—largely originals—and slowly unravels them. Musical structures are dismantled and each piece is explored until the work is beautiful, fragile, and nearly collapsing under its own weight. Just before it breaks, the band pulls it back together.

“It has something to do with loving [the music] so much that you want to peel off every layer and experience it in more dimensions, somehow,” says Anderson. “When you come back to the melody proper, it’s just that much more beautiful, because you’re seeing it from all of these different perspectives.”

Anderson and King met in 1987, growing up in Golden Valley. In 1990, Anderson spent a year at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, where he met Iverson, a Menomonie, Wisconsin, high school student who played jazz around campus. The three jammed together once that year, before dispersing—Anderson to Philadelphia and then New York, Iverson to NYC, and King to LA before returning to the Twin Cities.

“During those ten years, we all went our separate ways,” Anderson says. “We all started leading groups, writing music, and putting out records on small labels.”

“The first time the three of us played together after the ten-year break was in 1999 or 2000,” Iverson says. “It immedia

Bill Snyder writes about music and film for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.

tely felt like something . . . . We knew if we gave it some love, it could turn into something special.”

That “something special” comes from the friendship nurtured over the years. “Nobody plays it safe,” Anderson says. “The rug can get pulled out from you at any moment. You can count on those moments to be where some real music happens. It all comes down to trust that we’re all three up there with the same goal in mind, making the best music that we can, and no one is going to get left out in the cold.” Oct. 4. Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2128 S. 4th St., Mpls., 612-624-2345, umn.edu/umato, thebadplus.com