Sight Reading
"Musical thoughts and afterthoughts"
Marco Bertoli
Nome: Marco Bertoli
Italian journalist, translator and music writer for italian Musica Jazz magazine, based in Milano, Italy.
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The Bad Plus (2005 interview)
The Bad Plus are not really new, even if the recent worldwide clamor made them seem like the hottest thing since Charlie Parker put a sax to his lips and BLEW. Their signing for Sony (2003) and the subsequent releasing of “These Are The Vistas”, “Give” and “Suspicious Activity” was accompanied by a flurry of marketing (including a movie in the rockumentary fashion) quite unusual for a jazz outfit. With Reid Anderson on bass, Ethan Iverson on piano and David King on drums, The Bad Plus is a creative group effort.
Sony’s marketing department insists on the trio’s pop songs covers, although these are only a minor part of the BP repertoire. A “cooperative of composers” these musicians had already enjoyed a moderate renown before they formed their group. In person, The Bad Plus are soft-spoken in a way their music is not – a roiling mix of bright colors and aggressive dynamics, precariously balanced between irony, sentimentality and a sense of impending disaster. They might remind the listener of certain new American writers—David Foster Wallace, J. Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem—for example.
Anderson: “Foster Wallace comes from the Midwest, just like us. Growing up there instead of New York or Chicago we found ourselves exposed to different influences and freer, I think, to follow our own inclinations, less burdened with what’s cool and what’s not”.
Iverson: “I see a connection with those writers in a shared sense of American belonging . The way I feel this belonging is in acknowledging the many musical traditions of the U.S. Coming to BP, jazz and classical for me; for Reid and Dave also rock, pop, country…”.
Anderson: “I am a songwriter, and I like to sing along with my guitar. In my compositions, the melody dictates the course to harmony and rhythm, à la Ornette if you like - Ornette is a lodestar for all of us. Thus, I don’t really write differently for BP than for my rock group, Sun, even if of course I take in account Ethan’s and David’s personality”.
Melody:
As an encore to their set at the Blue Note in Milan, the BP premiered their iconoclastic version of Chariots of Fire (now on ”Suspicious Activities”) . During the interview I told them how my friend responded to the song: “They play with such sentiment!”.
Iverson answered, “That’s true, it’s such a beautiful melody and we love playing it. Oh, so you heard some irony in our arrangement? Well, let’s put it this way, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that a mark of the work of art is its balance between irony and sentiment. In this sense, the very choice to play Chariots of Fire could be seen as a declaration of intent… like doing a difficult thing but always trying to communicate”.
Anderson: “Jazz musicians often sport a defeated look on stage, as if despairing of ever being understood. After our gigs lots of people come backstage and tell us ‘I didn’t know I could enjoy jazz’. But our music is not especially accommodating. We simply use a strong melody as a cue for communication. That’s all it is behind our covers”.
MB: Do you pay attention to the so called “schools" of the piano trio”? Like the black one (Ahmad Jamal, for instance) and the white one (Evans, Jarrett)?
Anderson: “No”.
Iverson: “I never really thought in these terms, but i appreciate the reference to Ahmad Jamal [Anderson nods vigorously], especially the Crosby-Fournier trio, where each man used to write his own part. So we love Jamal and cooperative bands, but also bands with a strong leadership: Coltrane, Coleman, Jarrett’s American quartet are strong influences, with their warm, fuzzy sound”.
MB: Ethan, for the first time in your career with BP you were given the chance to play jazz every day.
Iverson: “Yes, and my technique registered a huge improvement, my sound grew bigger. I needed that, because my listening habits tend to austere and rarefact music”.
MB: Will you still pursue individual endeavor?
Iverson: “No, the BP turned definitely into a full-time job!”.
Sony’s marketing department insists on the trio’s pop songs covers, although these are only a minor part of the BP repertoire. A “cooperative of composers” these musicians had already enjoyed a moderate renown before they formed their group. In person, The Bad Plus are soft-spoken in a way their music is not – a roiling mix of bright colors and aggressive dynamics, precariously balanced between irony, sentimentality and a sense of impending disaster. They might remind the listener of certain new American writers—David Foster Wallace, J. Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem—for example.
Anderson: “Foster Wallace comes from the Midwest, just like us. Growing up there instead of New York or Chicago we found ourselves exposed to different influences and freer, I think, to follow our own inclinations, less burdened with what’s cool and what’s not”.
Iverson: “I see a connection with those writers in a shared sense of American belonging . The way I feel this belonging is in acknowledging the many musical traditions of the U.S. Coming to BP, jazz and classical for me; for Reid and Dave also rock, pop, country…”.
Anderson: “I am a songwriter, and I like to sing along with my guitar. In my compositions, the melody dictates the course to harmony and rhythm, à la Ornette if you like - Ornette is a lodestar for all of us. Thus, I don’t really write differently for BP than for my rock group, Sun, even if of course I take in account Ethan’s and David’s personality”.
Melody:
As an encore to their set at the Blue Note in Milan, the BP premiered their iconoclastic version of Chariots of Fire (now on ”Suspicious Activities”) . During the interview I told them how my friend responded to the song: “They play with such sentiment!”.
Iverson answered, “That’s true, it’s such a beautiful melody and we love playing it. Oh, so you heard some irony in our arrangement? Well, let’s put it this way, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that a mark of the work of art is its balance between irony and sentiment. In this sense, the very choice to play Chariots of Fire could be seen as a declaration of intent… like doing a difficult thing but always trying to communicate”.
Anderson: “Jazz musicians often sport a defeated look on stage, as if despairing of ever being understood. After our gigs lots of people come backstage and tell us ‘I didn’t know I could enjoy jazz’. But our music is not especially accommodating. We simply use a strong melody as a cue for communication. That’s all it is behind our covers”.
MB: Do you pay attention to the so called “schools" of the piano trio”? Like the black one (Ahmad Jamal, for instance) and the white one (Evans, Jarrett)?
Anderson: “No”.
Iverson: “I never really thought in these terms, but i appreciate the reference to Ahmad Jamal [Anderson nods vigorously], especially the Crosby-Fournier trio, where each man used to write his own part. So we love Jamal and cooperative bands, but also bands with a strong leadership: Coltrane, Coleman, Jarrett’s American quartet are strong influences, with their warm, fuzzy sound”.
MB: Ethan, for the first time in your career with BP you were given the chance to play jazz every day.
Iverson: “Yes, and my technique registered a huge improvement, my sound grew bigger. I needed that, because my listening habits tend to austere and rarefact music”.
MB: Will you still pursue individual endeavor?
Iverson: “No, the BP turned definitely into a full-time job!”.
(Musica Jazz, December 2005)
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