The Bad Plus Play Stravinsky: A concert review in seven movements

When: Friday–Saturday, May 20–21, 2011 • Where: Loring Theater • Who: The Bad Plus: Ethan Iverson, piano; Reid Anderson, bass; Dave King, drums

Contributors:

•  Bruce Abbott thrives on musical immersion. He is a database designer and bass clarinetist (“Deep Burble”).

•  Don Berryman is webmaster of the Jazz Police website and a videographer. His Youtube channel, Jazzarazzi, documents the Twin Cities jazz scene.

•  Larry Englund hosts the weekly radio show “Rhythm and Grooves” for KFAI Radio Without Boundaries. As DJ Larry Englund, he spins everything from jazz to soul, funk, world beats, and rock of many kinds.

•  Kip Jones is a violinist and composer hard at work here in the Twin Cities. His latest CD, Hallazgo, features 11 songs written for solo violin with voice.

•  Bill Kempe is a composer, conductor, singer, and ardent Stravinsky fan.

•  Bonnie Marshall is vice president of development for the American Composers Forum.

Comments are published in the order received.

Larry Englund

It was many, many years ago that I watched Maurice Bejart’s ballet of The Rite of Spring, a powerful spectacle featuring what seemed like hundreds of dancers on stage. With only three musicians on stage Saturday night, The Bad Plus created an aural spectacle rather than a visual one. I especially like the way that Reid Anderson’s bass would be turned up at various times, creating a trio sound that seemed much greater than the sum of its parts. The accompanying video was at times a bit distracting, as I found myself wondering what music the upside-down dancer was hearing. Dave King’s drum work, coupled with Ethan Iverson’s attack on the piano, soon brought me back to full attention to their performance. I’ve no idea what a classical musician might think of their performance, but as a jazz fan, I enjoyed it.

More from the Ethan Iverson interview

This weekend (May 20–21), the jazz trio The Bad Plus comes to the Loring Theater in Minneapolis to perform their version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, commissioned by Duke Performances and the Kennedy Center. I wrote a preview for the StarTribune around an interview with pianist Ethan Iverson. Because print has word counts and column inches, the whole interview wouldn't fit into the final article. Here are more highlights and insights.

PLE: When did you first hear The Rite of Spring? Do you remember what kind of effect it had on you?

Ethan Iverson: I didn’t see Fantasia until my 20s. I definitely heard it as a teenager, when I began listening to classical music.

As far as my relationship to the Rite goes, I actually knew much of Stravinsky’s other music better than I knew The Rite of Spring. If you’re a Stravinskyite, it’s almost the odd man out, first because it’s his most famous piece, and also because it sort of concludes an early chapter of his music, which is still very Russian and thick and glittering. A lot of us who love Stravinsky might form a different kind of relationship with works after that period—like Le Noce, Oedipus Rex, the Octet. Which actually remains my favorite Stravinsky music.

One of the pleasures of this project was I have gotten to know the Rite very well, of course, and it lives up to the hype. It’s one of the great masterpieces.

Did you have a second choice for the Duke project?

Not really. We came up with a bunch of bad ideas. Another thing about the Rite: It’s so well known, and it’s been so appropriated everywhere. That made it appealing. It was not as problematic in our view to do a reinterpretation of it, since ours is one of many reinterpretations, thefts, whatever. To take on Les Noces would be a problem.

Getting ready for The Rite

Stravinsky's grave on San Michele

I’m pretty jazzed about the week of May 13 when, thanks to the Minnesota Orchestra and The Bad Plus, I’ll get to hear Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring performed live twice.

On May 13-14, the Orchestra will give an “Inside the Classics” performance of the Rite. Billed as “not your typical night at the orchestra,” an “Inside” event starts by exploring the music with discussion and examples, followed by an intermission, after which the orchestra plays the whole thing. 

Violist Sam Bergman hosts, and Sarah Hicks conducts. I love the idea of learning more about a piece before I hear it—better than reading program notes, which are often unbearably dry or (worse) cursory.

Lately I’ve been listening to the Rite quite a lot, and reading a bit about that piece and Stravinsky, ahead of The Bad Plus performance at the Loring Theater on May 20-21. TBP was co-commissioned by Duke Performances and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to transform Stravinsky’s work for orchestra into a work for jazz trio. The world premiere took place at Duke University on March 26 and earned mostly glowing reviews. If you don’t feel it will spoil the surprise (I didn’t), you can hear the whole thing at The Checkout, Josh Jackson’s website.

I also listened to a recording of Stravinsky conducting the Rite (recorded in 1960 with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra), and a new recording by the young Ukrainian pianist Serhiy Salov, who arranged Stravinsky’s orchestral score for solo piano. (I learned about the Salov recording from Jason Rabin’s interview with TBP pianist Ethan Iverson, in which Iverson calls Salov a “super-virtuoso.”) Stravinsky himself wrote a piano four-hands score (two pianists, two pianos) and performed it with Debussy. I’m tempted to click the “Buy” button on amazon.com right now for the Amsterdam Quartet version.

Along the way, I listened to Liane Hansen’s interview with The Bad Plus at NPR, read a review at the Duke Performances’ blog, The Thread, and another at CVNC: The Classical Voice of North Carolina.  I checked Iverson’s blog, Do the Math, and found a post-premiere post titled “Victory Lap,” in which he noted succinctly, “TBP expects to be playing On Sacred Ground frequently in upcoming seasons.” Sounds like he was pleased.

In the NPR jazz blog, A Blog Supreme, Josh Jackson pointed out that E.S.T. had included part of the Rite in a hidden track on its U.S. debut CD, Somewhere Else Before (the track isn’t named on the CD—it’s hidden, duh—but when you copy it to iTunes, it’s called “Dark Water”). In a comment to that piece, Glenn Wood named a Red Snapper track, “Shellback,” that draws from the same source, so I had to hear that, too. (Thanks, Jonah.)

Why all of these peregrinations? Part curiosity, part preparation. I interviewed Ethan Iverson yesterday and wanted to have at least a few ducks in a row. (Over the past several years, many artists I’ve interviewed have expressed real surprise that I know something about them and their work. People, please.) Last week, I mentioned the upcoming interview to my music theory/piano teacher, Stephen Dewey, and instead of spending the hour on the Cycle of Fifths, we talked about Stravinsky. He loaned me his copy of the Norton Anthology of Western Music: Volume II, which includes the orchestral score for Part 2: “The Adoration of the Earth, Dances of the Young Girls.” 

Having never seen an orchestral score, I was able to follow along while listening to the Stravinsky recording only by counting very fast and running my finger across the page. So many staves, so many notes, so many instruments! This is the score Sarah Hicks will use when she conducts the Minnesota Orchestra.

Earlier today, I stumbled through Iverson’s Stravinsky essay, “Mixed Meter Mysterium,” in which it’s obvious he has steeped himself in Stravinsky, listening to every recording and reading every book, biography, and critical essay he could find. I imagined his personal Stravinsky library when he wrote “I opened up the score of Ode while listening to Stravinsky’s recording….”

Then I followed a link on Iverson’s blog in his post, “Read, Rite, and Blew,” to another review of the Duke premiere, this one by a roundtable of composers and Ph.D. candidates in music. My eyebrows flew into my hairline when I read these words by Aaron Johnson from Columbia University: “Honestly, projects like this always run the risk of the most pandering aspects of ‘jazzin’ the classics.’ We know jazz musicians have musical interests beyond jazz, but what do they bring to a project like this?”

While I don’t want to get into a pissing contest with Mr. Johnson—a Ph.D. candidate in music would wipe the floor with me—he might have done a little preparing of his own before making that careless comment about jazz musicians. Every jazz musician I know has musical interests way beyond jazz. For starters, it’s a survival skill. However, I do thank Mr. Johnson for later pointing out the connection between Bernard Hermann’s Psycho score and Stravinsky’s Rite. Now I’m hearing Stravinsky everywhere.

Related: 

The Bad Plus "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring": Reviews of the premiere at Duke

Stravinsky bookends: "The Rite" at OH and the Loring

Press release for The Bad Plus Stravinsky show at the Loring

The Bad Plus plus Stravinsky

Photo taken May 21, 2006, on Isola di San Michele in the Venetian lagoon.

The Bad Plus plus Stravinsky

Dave King mentioned this Duke commission when we spoke at the Dakota after The Bad Plus performed there at Christmas. I love the whole idea, plus it seems like a perfectly logical move for a band that has always defied convention but appears to be turning more toward chamber jazz. 

Their second-to-last release, For All I Care, includes their interpretations of works by Gyorgy Ligeti, Milton Babbitt, and Stravinsky. Their latest, Never Stop, their first CD of all originals and no covers, features the gorgeous and lyrical "People Like You." (Here's a review of the CD.)

During the two Christmas shows I attended, there was a lot less tall-tale-telling than in past performances, more serious music-making—not that they haven't been serious before, but there's something about their recent music that feels more serious.

Two new compositions by Reid Anderson, "In Stitches" and "Mint," were breathtaking and suite-like. All three members of the band—Anderson, Ethan Iverson, and Dave King—are writing interesting, complex compositions. The wit is still there in the tunes and the titles ("My Friend Metatron," "Bill Hickman at Home"), but the group as a whole seems more grown-up and down to business. Like, once the Beatles were the mop-topped, boyish, antics-prone Fab Four, and then they were the Beatles.

L to R: Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson, Dave King. Photo by John Whiting.

Here's the press release from the publicists at Big Hassle Media:

World Premiere of The Bad Plus's "On Sacred Ground: 

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring"

Commissioned by Duke Performances, the work debuts on Saturday, 

March 26, at Reynolds Theater, Duke University

February 8, 2011, Durham, NC - The Bad Plus has been commissioned by Duke Performances to create a reappraisal and rearrangement of Igor Stravinsky's iconic Rite of Spring.