That language, melding bebop with 21st-Century backbeats and influence from Ornette Coleman to Chopin, has made them one of the hottest jazz groups on the planet. They’re wild onstage and no tamer in the studio, spinning out sophisticated original tunes as well as imaginative covers of Nirvana, the Police, and even Black Sabbath. Their latest release Give, produced by studio virtuoso Tchad Blake, earned Blake a Grammy nomination. Look for another album this Fall. While you wait, you can check out Blunt Objects, an Internet-only live album from Tokyo. But the Bad Plus isn’t satisfied earning accolades and playing every club and festival on the planet. They’re on a mission to revolutionize jazz.
Ethan says some jazz has gotten overly introverted and intellectual: “Our sort of Midwestern solution is to put the backbeat and the rock and the Nirvana in it. In a way, what we’re trying to do is just put the streets back into it, the way that Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis put the streets in it.” That’s not an easy task with so much history: “In the post-modern era, it is difficult when the page is so astoundingly white. You have all those influences to boil down.”
In fact, it took some time before Ethan was ready to “come out” as a jazz superstar. He was playing constantly. “I’ve never had a job that wasn’t playing the piano — in other words, I’ve never had a job,” he says. But while he was making albums in his 20s, “If no one ever heard those records, that’s okay with me. When we made These Are the Vistas, I was like, okay, I think this is cool.” So how did this detached intellectual find the passion to let loose as one of the wildest players around? Why, classical piano lessons and ballet . . . that’s what you expected to hear, right?
Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet
Ethan was late to classical music; completely uninterested as a child. But starting in his early 20s, he earned his classical stripes, studying with Sophia Rostoff and Fred Hersch, protégés of legendary teacher Abby Whiteside (he still takes lessons with Rostoff and played Bach suites for her between tours). When Ethan bought his iPod, he knew what he’d fill it with first: the full back catalogs of his favorite two composers, Russian great Igor Stravinsky and avant-garde Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti — admitting he steals a lot of licks from the latter composer’s Piano Etudes. One of his heroes is Frederik Rzewski, the composer and “phenomenal improviser. Rzewski is an incredible musician and apparently doesn’t practice — lucky bastard!”
So why all the classical name-dropping from a player who, even while studying classical repertoire, says he knew in his heart he always wanted to play jazz? That gets back to the Bad Plus’ world-changing mission: “I believe that pianists of the future will become more and more able to deal with the improvising world and the non-improvising world.” He points to the classical background of many jazz greats and suspects that, likewise, even giants like Beethoven loved improvisation, too. “I don’t believe in urtext. I have a feeling he made more of it up than we think now.” He looks to classical players from early in the century for an improvisational sense of classical music. “They make a Chopin Nocturne as much their own as a bebop saxophone player makes ‘Confirmation’ his own.”
Five years as musical director for modern ballet troupe Mark Morris Dance Group gave Ethan a chance to play constantly and work with one of the great geniuses of dance. “I didn’t get to play with Coltrane or Charles Mingus,” he says, “but I did get to play with Mark Morris, and watch his art every day for five years. Any time I wasn’t playing, I was in the audience watching. It had a profound influence on me.”
In a commission for the Morris Group last fall, the Bad Plus improvised just one section of seven — every other musical element was closely married to Morris’ movement. “Mark will put on a Handel piece, and you’ll see the music, and you’ll also see some lovemaking and some human emotion that anyone can relate to. And there will also be some fancy math that you probably won’t be able to see the first time, but that’s the secret engine in the dance that makes it go the way it has to.”
Morris’ reputation for being difficult to work with doesn’t bother Ethan. “I’ve always had a great working relationship with him,” he says. “He can be an abrupt and caustic guy, but I think if I had worked with Charles Mingus he would’ve punched me in the mouth. I love Mark Morris as a man. He’s a beautiful cat, and his ear for music is second to none.”
Aside from forcing Ethan to hone his classical chops, working with Morris helped him find a balance with his own visceral side. “Everything I say is all extremely high brow. That’s my nature,” he says. “It’s this intellectual, non-grounded mofo — that’s really who I am. And Mark has all of that, but he also has lowbrow, direct communication. It marries entertainment, if you will, with high-vibrating intellectual properties. Reid [Anderson, bassist] and Dave [King, drummer] got it through rock — communication plus fancy calligraphy — but I needed to get it from Mark Morris.”
Jazz Messengers
Don’t assume that Ethan’s classical background, or the band’s forays into Ozzy Osbourne tunes, means the Bad Plus isn’t true to its jazz roots. To Ethan and the trio, it’s all the same stuff. “My heart is in late ’50s and ’60s jazz, with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. The best jazz has always been collective groups.”
Now that the Bad Plus is being hailed by some as “the future of jazz” — an imposing label to swallow — has Ethan got some sense of where jazz might be headed? “If there was something I would want the Bad Plus to teach people, it’s about this idea of the band,” he says. “It’s time for the improvised music to really own up to the band concept. There’s a lot of room for the music to grow.”
Having an unbridled jazz group that plays like a band isn’t entirely unprecedented, though. Ethan looks to Keith Jarrett’s quartet with Dewey Redman (tenor), Charlie Haden (bass), and Paul Motian (drums). “It’s beautiful that Keith was such a heavy virtuoso, such a young guy, and got the three baddest cats he could who wouldn’t follow his direction — they were like a pack of wild animals. And Keith was cool with that and played his best stuff with them.” That’s the goal of the Bad Plus, Ethan says, “I’m interested in high energy, high velocity, high ensemble playing.”
Digging the Trench
Ethan not only wants to revive the band concept, but “pianistic exploration,” too. “The first three generations of jazz pianists were monster soloists who played with both hands all over the instruments,” says Ethan. “Art Tatum, obviously. But also Jelly Roll [Morton] and the great boogie-woogie pianists like Albert Ammons . . . it’s a whole scene that they’ve got going that in some ways is closer to Chopin than any ‘modern jazz’ is. I want to play the whole piano dynamically and with both hands.”
In a performance later that evening at New York’s Knitting Factory, it sounds like Ethan is using both hands and some other limbs he isn’t telling us about. He intones awkward announcements in geeky deadpan between numbers, eliciting giggles from the enchanted crowd, but then tears up the piano, whether improvising or simply “playing parts” through some fairly complex compositions he and his bandmates have cooked up. It’s Jelly Roll meets hard rock. Ethan is reluctant when it comes to tips about miking (he’s test-driving a Helpinstill piano pickup) or piano choice (likes Steinways, doesn’t like Yamahas, but rarely gets his pick and points out that Monk could make an abused instrument sound great). His advice for playing in a trio is a little simpler: Play loud. Really loud. With David and Reid going at full-tilt on bass and drums, you can’t gripe about an instrument — Ethan just plays louder, especially when it comes to a signature Bad Plus climax. “There are songs where I know I’d better start digging the trench ahead of time, because it’s going through to the other side of the mountain, and David and Reid aren’t going to stop.”
“We like to rough it up. Play it more raw,” Ethan says. That extends to making Ozzy Osbourne look shy on a cover of “Iron Man,” “I think ours is more ferocious.”
Mechanism of The Bad Plus
The Bad Plus has everything, except for ego clashes. John and Reid bonded as kids, playing together at age 13, and Ethan met Reid at 17. It’s been pure musical love ever since. “Dave King is just the font of joy in life,” Ethan says. “Reid is a very beautiful cat, too. I’m probably the darkest, most difficult to deal with member of the band.” If there’s any tension, it’s on the road, because “you see each other more than you see your girlfriend.”
With each of the three members writing music, the learning process can sometimes be “arduous” — there’s little to no paper involved, and plenty of tough rote learning. Reid and John both play the piano, too, so when they have a new musical idea they’ll show it at the piano. The compositions are personal, but the Bad Plus’ end product always has the stamp of all its members, including Ethan. “At the end of the day, I put my vibe on all of the music,” he says. The compositions are individual, but the finished product is all about the band. “It’s not written in a cooperative fashion, but then we carve it out together.”
Part of what makes the Bad Plus a little unusual for a jazz trio is that they’re just as comfortable not improvising as they are being free. “When we play Ornette Coleman’s ‘Street Woman,’ we take pride in playing it totally different every time . . . but there are other pieces that are really tight. Each song is really different, and has its own language,” Ethan says. “I don’t have a problem just sitting there playing parts when I need to. Any pop musician understands the importance of doing that, but I think jazz pianists in general are a little less comfortable with it.” Ethan credits his incalculable hours as Mark Morris’ musical director and, prior to that, playing in a tango band.
The Bad Plus melds the disparate musical tastes its three members forged in adolescence. While Reid and David bring a love for Nirvana and rock to the trio, Ethan says that he “would’ve run as far away as I could from a backbeat in search of more Albert Ayler records” as a teenager.
How do far-out takes on the Police compare to the original? “They’re like two different paintings,” he says. “There’s the right painting; ours is the Dali version.” And if you’ve been waiting for them to take up vocals and jazz standards, incidentally, they already have — Bad Plus-style, of course. Ethan croons for “My Funny Valentine” on Blunt Objects, singing, as he puts it, “in an abstract style.”
So what’s next for jazz’s hottest band? Ethan says they’ll keep playing: “I talked to Paul Motian, and he said between 1954 and 1970 he played a gig every day.” The Bad Plus isn’t there yet, but they’re close. Success has given them opportunities they won’t turn down. “We’re trying to jump through the window while it’s open.” And, while they do, young jazzers of America, the Bad Plus wants to speak to you: “If there is a message from the Bad Plus that we want to pass on, it’s that you can do whatever you want.” The more we hear from the Bad Plus, the more we realize just how unlimited “whatever you want” can be.