Before reading, take a moment to download a special edition of Stormy Mondays featuring a soundtrack for the reviews. The cuts from The Bad Plus come from a BBC performance in June of 08, and the Kurt Rosenwinkel tracks coming from a WBGO broadcast of the guitarist’s Wednesday night show last week.
Giant by The Bad Plus
Nemesis by Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet
Metal by The Bad Plus
Turns by Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet
Physical Cities by The Bad Plus
Early in the new year, before a sold out Village Vanguard (a great little room that I have come, like literally generations of jazz fans before me, to love) The Bad Plus opened their early set with Apollo. The performance was all about David King, who was playing the sides of drums and cymbals and rarely hitting a head to introduce the song. Such moments always call to mind Berklee professor Bob Moses and his musical off-spring Billy Martin, whether or not they had any direct influence on the musicians involved.
It was during the following UR that the band truly coalesced, however, King and his cohorts, pianist Ethan Iverson and bassist Reid Anderson, all hunched over their instruments and listening intensely, as though they were hearing their own music for the first time. At points Iverson rose up from his bench, drawn by the music, or twisted his legs in odd contortions (a gesture I’ve long argued is the mark of a genius on 88 keys). Anderson, meanwhile, was lost in the moment, and seemed to be listening more to the space between the notes than the notes themselves, or at least relishing it more. At the end, King was once again the dominant character, exploding across the music.
A fine and convoluted rant about a stunt driver and chocolate milk led to the mellow musings of Iverson’s Bill Hickman at Home, but just moments later the pianist was inside his instrument, plucking strings and eking out screeches. King had a pair of electronic E.T.s with glowing eyes, creating light feedback as he rubbed them across the heads of his kit- an odd, playful gesture even to those in audience steeped in the bend circuit toys and general tweakiness of Marco Benevento and Brad Barr. And on a cover of Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do no less!
The playing was entirely skillful, deft, with on-a-dime tempo shifts, vamps and effortless response from each musician. They were also able to channel the energy of that improvisational precision into a tight, incredibly complicated composition, Metal, just as soon as the previous song ended.
People Like You gorgeously swept from delicate to grand, exiting on an understated bass line, before the trio began Old Money by spinning tracery webs of sound that were so closely parallel they nearly brushed against one another, but didn’t. At some point King had a tambourine in one hand, was tapping at his high-hat with the other, and digging down deep with Anderson, and the movement plummeted from there with the deepest bass notes at the very end- a sly moment. Another fine Iversonian rant about retired Olympians and villagers’ cheers of “Jacques! Jacques! Jacques! Jacques!” introduced 1972 Bronze Medalist from These Are the Vistas.
“The Bad Pus is very much in support of second and third place finishers.”
The goofy tune held tight to the turns, a fun number that had King dominating again at the end as he reached way to the far side of his cymbals to crash down. The show closed with the pairing of Semi-Simple Variations > Big Eater. The first tune picked up right where the previous joint had dropped, and ran with it, eventually slamming into a monstrous drum solo–all that seething energy that had been floating around stage right throughout the set had to boil over eventually. The others rejoined the mix with breakneck playing, Anderson in particular using his fast fingering to dip into a rocking groove- back and forth, not fist-pumping, but it was that too; it was definitely that too.
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I came to Kurt Rosenwinkel through Brian Blade whom I came to through Wayne Shorter whom I came to through Miles Davis, whom I used to listen to when I was kid and had very little idea of just what I was hearing, although something told me to keep listening. And yet it seems like I could’ve come to him through Steve Kimock as well, not because they actually have any relationship at all (they don’t, to the best of my knowledge), but because both guitarists have such impeccably clean tone, fleet finger work and a penchant for long-form solos that take time to ponder the ideas at hand. Regardless, it was a treat to see him debut his new quartet at The Village Vanguard, the locale for his last album, the double disc The Remedy.
A big crash opened Our Secret World to start the show, and everyone’s head was bobbing, their bodies squirming from side to side. Immediately Rosenwinkel, leaning back behind an arc of pedals and effects boxes that would make an arena rocker blush, soared across the music. That’s almost all I want to say about his playing, because there’s no better way to describe it; that’s enough. But drummer Kendrick Scott was wicked too, tight playing with a comfy, loose presence. He was right there as the piano solo late in the song drew a response from bassist Ben Street, all three instruments meshing for a moment, and unraveling together.
Another piano solo from Aaron Parks, still, pensive and delicate, prefaced his own Peaceful Warrior, and when it finally began to rise, Rosenwinkel was there, matching note for note – it was pretty music to be sure, but damn was it good. Later in the song, the guitarist showered cascades of notes across the stage, the drums and bass erupting underneath. I was struck at how similar the interaction was to what I had witnessed about six months earlier in the same room, when drummer extraordinaire Brian Blade, whose Fellowship Band prominently features Rosenwinkel, shook in hurricane force fits under similar playing – there is something about the guitarist’s sound and approach that seems to draw fire and insanity out his band mates. The piece closed with a half dozen piano/guitar back-and-forths, not traded licks, but long, considered passages that had Parks lurching sinuously with the music, and the guitarist racing faster with each round. I recently heard an eleven year old describe Rosenwinkel’s solo on the transition from Most Precious One > Most Precious One (Prodigy) off Season of Changes by saying, “This sounds like fireworks.” This too sounded like fireworks.
The opus Path of the Heart began with a long, long guitar intro swinging from nearly classical to noodling, and when the band came in, they were there to back the lead, so that the solo seemingly never ended, maybe never even switched gears. Scott’s brush work was as thick and rounded as the guitar here, but when Parks took his lead and began to stir up the elements, the drummer switched back to sticks to carry the movement on fat, popping toms. And again on the following new, untitled cut Scott was a stand out, playing with bare hands briefly early on, but by the end his sound was big and loose with rides and rocking (literally rocking it so it nearly tumbled off the stage) the crash.
The final tune of the set had him holding a stick perpendicular to a drum and running his hand down the length to create weird vibrations while Street introduced a shaky, open groove that slowly shifted into a steady pulse. It was on that foundation that the band whipped up a fiery storm of music, still nothing dark here at all mind you, but fiery nonetheless. Parks took another solo, Street right along side, as he had been all night; all night these sub-pairings of drums and guitar, piano and bass, and finally the music slammed into a monstrous drum solo- all that seething energy that had been floating around stage right throughout the set had to boil over eventually. When it ended, the band was back, big and bad, to ride the music home.
