The Bad Plus's The Rite of Spring due out March 25

It's been three years since The Bad Plus first performed Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" at Duke Performances. Their version--stripped down for piano, bass, and drums, yet still authentic and full--was then called "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring." The "On Sacred Ground" is gone and the recording is simply called "The Rite of Spring." Probably easier for people to remember and find (and for Sony Masterworks to market).

Until now, the only way to hear this remarkable performance was live (for example, at the Dakota last December) or online at WBGO's The Checkout, which still has a link to a recording of the debut performance at Duke. We're eager to hear this studio recording, where every effect and nuance of Reid Anderson's electronic intro should be clear, and all the notes. I'm tempted to buy new speakers.

Here's the press release.

New York, NY - Sony Music Masterworks has announced the release of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, arranged and performed by The Bad Plus. The long anticipated recording arrives in stores and at all leading digital retailers on March 25th.

The Bad Plus - bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King - have a well-earned reputation for pushing the limits on what is expected of a piano-bass-drums trio. The past 14 years have seen the genre-smashing band creating a distinctive repertoire of inventive original music, along with a series of iconoclastic covers of such divergent artists as Nirvana and Neil Young, Aphex Twin and Ornette Coleman. Now, with The Rite of Spring, the trio takes on one of the most influential works of the 20th century, a complex score fraught with revolutionary experiments in rhythm and metre, tonality and dissonance.

In 2010, when commissioned by Duke Performances at Duke University and Lincoln Center Out of Doors to create an evening-length work, The Bad Plus were reminded of their previous attempt at tackling a Stravinsky score when they recorded "Variation d'Apollon," from the composer's 1928 ballet, Apollo, on their 2009 releaseFor All I Care. Emboldened by their past achievement, the group translated Stravinsky's notoriously demanding score for piano, bass, and drums. The trio holds fast to the original work -- its frenetic tempi, pounding percussion and jarring repetitions an ideal fit for a band well known for its rhythmic ingenuity. Electronic undercurrents in the opening movement - orchestrated by bassist Reid Anderson - are expertly used to conjure Stravinsky's insurrectionary orchestrations, bringing depth and counterpoint to the acoustic foundation. With their rendition of The Rite of Spring, The Bad Plus has managed to uphold the radical spirit of Stravinsky's modernist masterpiece while also furthering their own ambitious approach towards music, a remarkable feat that affirms the trio's preeminence as the one of the most adventurous and imaginative bands of the modern era.

March 2011 saw Duke's Reynolds Theater host the debut performance of The Bad Plus' audacious version of Stravinsky's score, dubbed "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring." The group performed TheRite 13 times in 2012, and then, in 2013 - the centenary year of The Rite of Spring's riotous 1913 premiere at Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Élysées - The Bad Plus toured "On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring" to universal acclaim, including performances in Ireland, Canada, Israel, Norway and the Unites States. That same year also saw the trio accompanying the Mark Morris Dance Group at the annual Ojai North Festival for the world premiere of "Spring, Spring, Spring," choreographer Mark Morris' acclaimed new adaptation of "The Rite of Spring" ballet.

Known for their rigorous touring schedule, The Bad Plus has slated a wide array of international live dates through April, including two performances of The Rite of Spring alongside the Mark Morris Dance Group at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Krannert Center For The Performing Arts slated for March 14^th and 15. They are also confirmed to perform the piece in May in Phoenix, and will soon announce more appearances. For complete tour information, please visit www.thebadplus.com/tour-dates.php.

The Rite of Spring was produced and arranged by The Bad Plus. It was recorded in June 2013 in Union City, New Jersey's Kaleidoscope Sound Studios alongside engineer Pete Rende; the Executive Producer is Darryl Pitt.

L to R: Reid Anderson, Ethan Iverson, Dave King
Press photo

Related: 

Talking with Ethan Iverson about Stravinsky and Sony (December 25, 2013)

Stravinsky gets the Bad Plus treatment (Minneapolis StarTribune, May 17, 2011)

More from the Ethan Iverson interview

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

The violin and the well-tampered clavier: Hilary Hahn and Hauschka at Aria

Hauschka and Hilary Hahn
Photo: Mareike Foecking

“Silfra,” the album released in 2012 by virtuoso American classical violinist Hilary Hahn and German experimental pianist/composer Volker Bertelmann, known as Hauschka, has become one of my favorites. But it’s not what we heard when the two performed live in Minneapolis. Like the album, the concert was almost entirely improvised. Like the album, it was thrilling.

The first concert in a new series called Schubert Club Mix (from the Schubert Club, a 131-year-old presenting organization known mainly for its classical International Artist Series), “Hilary Hahn and Hauschka: Silfra” was successful in every way. A partnership with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series, it drew a sold-out crowd of more than 500 people to Aria in Minneapolis, a unique event space in the Warehouse District, for 80 minutes of music they will never hear again.

Introduced by a mutual friend a few years back, the violinist and the pianist – Hauschka plays prepared piano, its sound altered by objects placed on or between the strings – hit it off, did some performing together, and eventually met at Valgeir Sigurösson’s Greenhouse recording studios in Iceland, where a lot of interesting roads seem to lead (Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, and Sam Amidon have all recorded there). They worked with Sigurösson for ten days, and “Silfra” was the result, 12 tracks of inventive, joyful, minimalistic, mournful, unpredictable soundscape. Hahn’s violin soars over Hauschka’s piano, itself a small orchestra of singing notes, bonks, clanks, rattles and buzzes.

At Aria, both musicians are curious, questing, hyper-alert, ready to take chances. It seems that Hauschka assumes the lead, laying down cushions of rhythm and sound for Hahn to play on. They are excited to be there, and happy, and relaxed before the crowd, willing to tell us something about themselves and their process. “My temperament is higher because I’m traveling for the first time to Minneapolis,” Hauschka says at the start, then wonders aloud at the vastness of our Midwest; he had played the Friday before at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, and Saturday in Chicago at Constellation. Hahn had flown in that day from Miami, where she played a program of Verdi, Mozart and Prokofiev at the Adrienne Arsht Center the night before; she spent part of the day having her dress steamed.

Their collaboration is even more seductive live than on recording. He plays a repetitive figure on the keys; she takes short stabs and jabs at the strings. Melodies emerge, but only briefly. He thunders; she flies so high her notes almost pass out of hearing range. Moods shift from anxiety to melancholy to glee. They watch each other carefully and listen hard, responding in the split second, changing directions on a dime. They smile often. 

She tells us that her father was a student at St. Olaf College in Northfield, and she feels a connection to Minnesota as a result. He describes their working relationship: “We meet about three times a year over two years to play. We feel confident with each other. After two years, we go to Iceland to record … Tonight is the same. We meet, talk, and start playing. It is better than playing an album track a hundred times a year. When you do that, you end up thinking a lot about the mini bar.” 

She plays what sounds like a Celtic folk dance, homesick and wistful. He responds with a rumble from the low keys. Occasionally he reaches into the piano and moves things around. He adds a small box that makes a sustained electronic note, and both dance around it with their instruments. The music is immersive, hypnotic, beautiful and strange. It’s easy to wander off into your own imagination, then snap back and be surprised by where you are, in a three-story warehouse space of brick and stone, with outlines of past lives still on the walls. (Future concerts in the Mix series will also happen here.)

Hauschka's piano before the concert
Photo: Barry Kempton

An evening-length concert of prepared piano opens your ears to the instrument, because it is a real instrument, not a joke or a toy, and not (as some think) a crime against a perfectly good piano. A prepared piano is both keyboard and percussion array. It’s an instrument that offers randomness and spontaneity; the things inside it jump around and move, depending on what they’re made of and how they’re placed. (On the other hand, there's no doubt that Hauschka knows exactly what sound will result when he prepares certain strings in certain ways.) Chopsticks and skewers, ping-pong balls, rattles, shakers, clamps, clips, nuts, bolts, screws, bottle caps, erasers, plastic cups, bits of foil or leather, foam or clay, dental floss, rubber bands, small cymbals or tambourines, candy boxes, paper wads, sheets of paper, cardboard, forks, spoons, strings, copper … all create new timbres and pitches when keys are struck, or dampen the sound. A prepared piano is piano-plus, piano 2.0. More people should play it.

Toward the end, Hauschka does something dramatic and unexpected: he starts pulling things out of the piano and tossing them on the floor. He unprepares the piano while Hahn comps on her violin, softly hitting the strings in groups of four beats. Wooden sticks, bits of wood and tape, and other items are brought out and discarded. It’s like a phone booth full of clowns. Soon the piano is naked, but in a Rubenesque way, all solid flesh and curves. The Steinway emerges in full voice and deep, romantic chords on the slow, stately piece Hauschka plays while Hahn’s violin keens and shimmers overhead.

Just before the splashy encore, he quickly adds a few pieces of gaffer’s tape to the strings. “You didn’t have to work very hard to bring us back,” she says – not meaning that we were lazy with our applause, but that they wanted to return.

At the signing/meet-and-greet after the concert
iPhone photos by John Whiting

Related:

Hauschka Prepares the Piano (a video by Hilary Hahn)

How Hauschka prepares the piano (a video recorded at NPR)

Hilary Hahn and Hauschka Silfra EPK (the record label’s electronic press kit)

The Hilary Hahn and Hauschka: Silfra concert was performed Sunday, January 12, 2014 at Aria in Minneapolis, MN.

Seven lessons learned from Wayne McGregor | Random Dance

1. The human torso is a fifth limb, and it's made of bones and rubber.

2. An evening-length dance work can consist almost entirely of big, bold, sweeping, declarative movements, most performed with astonishing speed.

3. The human rib cage is a bellows.

4. Arms and legs are indistinguishable, and all are long.

5. Backs ripple. 

6. For some people, doing a split is like shrugging. This includes a standing/vertical split.

7. We thought we'd seen all the ways a body could bend, twist, stretch, expand and collapse, flex and fold. We were wrong.

Wayne McGregor | Random Dance by Ravi Deepres

Wayne McGregor | Random Dance performed "FAR" last night at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, part of the 2013/14 Northrop Dance series. "FAR" is named for "Flesh in the Age of Reason," a book by British historian and scholar Roy Porter, in which he explains how our understanding of the mind and body changed during the Age of Enlightenment. But you don't have to know a thing about that to be drawn in and fascinated by this dance. It's enough just to watch the bodies move.

"FAR" begins with dancers holding flaming torches while Cecilia Bartoli sings an aria, and ends with a woman lying motionless on the stage, alone in the dark. In between, dancers are solo, in pairs, in groups, sometimes as many as all ten at once, and the electronic soundscape by Australian composer Ben Frost pounds and hums and growls. The dancers are men and women, birds, beasts, insects, aliens walking toward us down the gangplank of their spaceship, against the light, like stick figures. Their movements are graceful and contorted, sinuous, sensuous, visceral and mathy, sometimes warm and familiar, sometimes strange and cold. And very fast. So fast you don't see an arm, but the wide, flesh-colored trail of an arm. Behind the dancers, a large panel of lights rises and lowers. The lights blink as we like to imagine the neural synapses do in our brains. Digital numbers count up and down rapidly. The lights shine like galaxies and single bright stars. The dancers swoop and glide, leap and crawl, jerk, shiver, tangle and separate. Is there a story, a narrative arc, a message? I don't try to find one. It's enough just to watch the bodies move.

Modern dance can be daunting, especially if you think you have to understand it to enjoy it. In that way, it's a lot like jazz. In "FAR," McGregor and his dancers do the heavy thinking and lifting, and for us, watching is enough.

A night at the Artists’ Quarter: The Phil Hey Quartet

Phil Hey by John Whiting

Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013: Phil Hey, drums; Phil Aaron, piano; Dave Hagedorn, vibes; Tom Lewis, bass

The countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve will be especially significant at the Artists’ Quarter, the basement jazz club in St. Paul. It will also be a countdown to the club’s closing its doors forever, perhaps to be reborn in a different form but never how it used to be.

For those of us who love the place, the past two months have been a countdown. The final appearance of Pete Whitman’s X-Tet in November. The last time Pat Mallinger and Bill Carrothers would have a weekend there. The last night the Dave Karr Quartet would play. And the Tuesday Night Band, and the Dean Granros Trio, and Snowblind, Bryan Nichols, Dean Magraw, Zacc Harris, Eric Alexander and David Hazeltine, the Adam Meckler Band, the Cory Wong Quartet, Brandon Wozniak, Valves Meet Slide, Lew Tabackin. 

We ticked off the regulars we could count on seeing there once a month, or once or twice a year. They came, they played, they said goodbye.

Last night it was the Phil Hey Quartet, part of the fabric of the AQ from the start. Fans know Hey for his splendid drumming and his outspokenness. Both were in evidence on Thursday.

Like many nights since owner Kenny Horst announced that the club would be closing, the AQ was packed to capacity, people squeezed around tables, stacked at the bar, standing in the doorway and against the back wall, some even seated on the floor near the stage.

Phil Aaron by John Whiting

Hey addressed the crowd early in the first set and often throughout the night, letting us know what we had heard or would be hearing, telling us something about the composer, joking that “Duke Ellington was a pretty good musician, I don’t care what anyone says,” basking in the unfamiliar heat and glow of a house full to bursting.

Early on, Hey said: “We haven’t played for so many people for the last 14 years. It’s nice to see you all tonight – on the last night we’re ever going to play. I’m feeling kind of bitter about this … It’s a very strange night. We go way back to 1978, when the AQ was at 26th and Nicollet. We were charter members of the Jackson Street location. And we’ve played here [at the Hamm Bldg. location] once a month since it opened. It’s different to have this kind of vibe in the house.”

And later: “I can say what I want up here tonight. What are they gonna do, not hire us again?"

And then, after the quartet played Charlie Haden’s “Silence” so beautifully that no one exhaled: “There is nowhere else we know where we can play this song. This is the best club I’ve ever played, the only jazz club in the Twin Cities. This music is hard enough to find in the U.S. – especially in the U.S. We have to keep it alive.”

How sweet the music was on Thursday night, how fine the quartet sounded: Hey on drums, Phil Aaron on piano, Dave Hagedorn on vibes, Tom Lewis on bass. All terrific musicians, with the ease and familiarity of old friends. Here’s what they played for us:

First set

“Bittersweet” by Sam Jones

“The Feeling of Jazz” by Duke Ellington

“Show-Type Tune (Tune for a Lyric)” by Bill Evans (Hey tells us Bill Evans was the given name for the great Yusef Lateef, who died earlier this week, something most of us probably didn't know)

“Lucent” by Frank Kimbrough

“Solar” by Miles Davis, which segued seamlessly into

“Silence” by Charlie Haden, more prayer than song

“Maffy” by Don Cherry

Second set

“The Fruit” by Bud Powell

“Fifth House” by John Coltrane (Hey: “a very snaky, tricky line”)

“Reflections” by Thelonious Monk

“Round Trip” by Ornette Coleman (Hey: “He was not ahead of his time; we were just behind”)

“Summer Night” by Harry Warren

And finally, to close:

“I’ll Be Seeing You” by Irving Berlin

Tom Lewis by John Whiting

There was no encore, because what can you say after this? Many of us probably heard the lyrics in our heads: “I’ll be seeing you/in all the old familiar places ... I’ll find you in the morning sun/and when the night is new/I’ll be looking at the moon/but I’ll be seeing you.” A song about seeking, not finding; about melancholy, memory, and loss. 

It was a jazz journey, a jazz survey, a jazz class way beyond 101. Swinging, sincere, and so generous, performed by four musicians in peak form, playing this challenging, difficult music for a ridiculously low five dollar cover charge. 

Hagedorn’s sticks (sometimes two, sometimes four) were a blur, and we were reminded that one of the world’s most distinguished vibes players lives here in Minnesota and teaches college in Northfield. Aaron’s pianism was precise, powerful, and expansive. He’s all about the music and doesn’t bother much to engage with the audience, so it’s sometimes easy to overlook his tremendous artistry. 

With Lewis, as always, every note was distinct, whole, and rounded; his bass is almost a keyboard, and his command of it absolute. Hey, the master, used sticks and mallets and brushes to paint great splashes of sound, and delicate tendrils, and landscapes bright with the brass of his cymbals.

Hey is a magician on the cymbals – and on something that looked like a small Chinese gong, he made notes bend and twist like streamers in the air.

Dave Hagedorn by John Whiting

The crowd, respectful, listened hard, and some people stayed through both sets. (Davis Wilson had said at the start of the night that “it’s okay to bonk your neighbor on the head and tell him to hold it down.”) There were many familiar faces, but more unfamiliar ones. 

Who were they? Jazz tourists? Funeral crashers? People who know the place is closing and want to be able to say they were there? (Lately, a lot of pictures are being snapped of people seated at tables and the bar, people standing in the door or before the big mural.) Are some finding out that jazz is more approachable and enjoyable than they thought? Are new jazz fans being made? If and when the AQ returns, in whatever form, will it draw larger audiences? Will the death of the AQ we know lead to a rebirth of support for jazz in the Twin Cities? 

I admit to complacency on my own part over the past several years. I knew that if I didn’t see the Phil Hey Quartet on a given Thursday night, I would have another chance the following month, and I thought that would last forever. Now I know better. Like everyone else, I crowded in for last night’s last hurrah.

Tonight and tomorrow, the Artists’ Quarter is hosting two jam sessions, billed as the AQ’s Final Weekend Jams. Friday’s rhythm section will feature Phil Aaron, Saturday’s Bryan Nichols, and many musicians are expected to show up for one last moment on the AQ’s stage. On Sunday and Monday, the club will be closed as preparations are made for New Year’s Eve.

And after, the hang: The scene at the bar
At left: Rich Solomon, Davis Wilson, Greg Paulus
Behind the bar: Dan Cunningham

Phil Aaron, Phil Hey, Tom Lewis

Phil Aaron, JT Bates, Tom Lewis