The piano trio format — acoustic piano, double bass and drums — has been a part of jazz for decades.
Bill Evans’ modest output from 1959-61 with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, spanning only two studio recordings and a pair of live albums, laid out many of the possibilities for imaginative, small-group jazz. In the early 1970s, with Motian on drums, pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden played wide, expansive music; their 1972 Hamburg concert, released last year on the ECM label, sounds barely containable on vinyl or mp3. Both groups played what a guy on the street would call “jazz”: swinging grooves, head arrangements and solos, on standards and originals. (Jarrett, with his trio, also played soprano sax, flute and percussion.)
But the DNA of the trio format was forever altered by the Bad Plus, a group from Minnesota formed by pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King in 2000, who’ll perform at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton on Friday, Jan. 23.
Five of eight tracks on their self-titled debut (also known as “Motel”) were composed by members of the group, but combustible covers of Abba’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” stole the headlines. The next four albums added songs by Blondie, Black Sabbath, Vangelis, David Bowie and Rush to their repertoire. “For All I Care,” released in 2009, with vocals by Wendy Lewis, was the crest of the rock/jazz cover wave: Pink Floyd, the Flaming Lips, Wilco, Yes, Roger Miller, the Bee Gees and more Nirvana, along with neo-classical/modernist compositions by Igor Stravinsky, Milton Babbitt and Gyorgy Ligeti.
There was blowback, the essence of which was protective and small-minded: Jazz musicians, playing rock songs? What gives? At a certain point, Anderson said, the covers were becoming too distracting. “It was important to draw a line in the sand,” he said.
Starting in 2010 with “Never Stop,” the Bad Plus has released three albums of original material in five years, with all three members contributing equally. (A take on Paul Motian’s “Victoria,” appearing at the end of 2012’s “Made Possible,” is the one exception.) Last year, they put out two new albums — the all-original “Inevitable Western,” and “The Rite of Spring,” an arrangement of Stravinsky’s legendary riot-causing ballet — and in October they performed Ornette Coleman’s “Science Fiction,” an album from 1971, at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York. The two sides of the Bad Plus persona — the cover/repertory piece and the compositional side — have separated themselves, like oil and vinegar, with each still vital to the success of the whole.
The focus on composition, Anderson said, was arrived at organically, but consciously. “All three of us are serious composers and interested in playing our music, and that same philosophy applies when we play so called cover pieces,” he said. “But with three composers, naturally we have a lot of music from all of us that we want to play. As much as we like doing the cover stuff, we want to keep the focus on us as composers who generate original music. The separation seems to be a good way to still have both.”
The Bad Plus’ original music is equal parts unknowable — a secret code or handshake, with a harmonic and metric language that’s all their own — and open to all: accessible melodies, often played in thirds or octaves between the piano and bass and rock/funk grooves you can lock into for a short stretch. On “Inevitable Western,” lines between composed and improvised parts are blended: you won’t hear, or maybe recognize, many solos. Three players stretch out together, within composed parameters. Songs are primary, not simply vehicles for improvisation. “That blurring is something we are aware of and that we do strive for,” Anderson said, “We’re interested in exploring what a song can be, how you contextualize improvisation.”
But songs have novel structures, with unexpected trajectories: “You Will Lose All Fear,” composed by Anderson, starts big, builds even more, and dips early, with a lengthy fade-out, perhaps simulating the flip of an album side. Others, like King’s episodic “Adopted Highway” — at almost 10 minutes, the longest track — are through-composed, organized in clusters of dynamic levels, meters and tonal centers, with short, internal variations.
Generally speaking, “we all bring a piece of music to the band fairly fully formed,” Anderson said. “The dynamic structure and the overall structure is more or less thought out. That’s not to say if something’s not working that we wouldn’t incorporate that. It takes on the life of the band. Nobody cares about their idea over what’s good for the group.”
After experimenting with electronics on “Made Possible,” “Inevitable Western” is nearly all-acoustic. “We figured we did that last time,” Anderson said. “This time, we said, ‘Let’s just make an acoustic record.’ We like to dabble, but we are acoustic piano, bass and drums. We don’t want to lose sight of that.”
The group, Anderson said, tends to “make concise statements, more like the Duke Ellington tradition than long-form improvising vehicles… Each song is its own world and statement: say what it has to say, and then get out.” The Rite of Spring project, Anderson added, got the group thinking about longer forms. “One thing that comes to mind is deeply involved in how Stravinsky carries this complicated music over this large structure,” he said. “It’s definitely eye-opening to see the devices he uses. It’s constantly evolving and very sophisticated, but it remains very understandable.”
The attraction to short songs, Anderson said, rather than long suites of music, was present from the group’s earliest days.
“We didn’t have to talk about it,” Anderson said. “We just agreed on it… We love the song form and jazz standards, the concise nature of those tunes. It just comes down to a personal aesthetic.”
THE BAD PLUS performs on Friday, Jan. 23, at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton. Showtime is 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $25. Information: iheg.com.
