Showing posts with label ethan iverson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethan iverson. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2012

Reid Anderson

Reid Anderson plays bass for the very interesting group Bad Plus.  He has at least three albums as leader that I have been fond of for some time: Abolish Bad Architecture, Dirty Show Tunes, and The Vastness of Space.  Right now I am playing 'Granada' from the first on that list.  Here is the lineup:
  1. Ethan Iverson (piano) 
  2. Reid Anderson (bass)
  3.  Mark Turner (tenor sax) and
  4.  Jeff Ballard (drums)
Iverson and Turner are the best known of the group.  Iverson sports a very unique style and has a number of excellent recordings of his own.  Turner is a fine tenor with a classical touch.  The cut is simply marvelous.  

I am also playing 'Imagination is Important' from Dirty Show Tunes.  Jordi Rossy replaces Ballard on drums. 

These three albums are a nice collection for your collection.  All, I think, are available from eMusic. 

Friday, January 15, 2010

The Best Jazz You Never Heard: Reid Anderson



If you are looking for evidence that genius still inhabits contemporary jazz, Ethan Iverson's work is a good place to start.  I blogged on Iverson back in June (sorry, but the links have been removed).  Iverson has been most visible as a member of The Bad Plus, a very eclectic and unspeakably daring group including Reid Anderson on bass and Dave King on drums.  To get an idea of how daring they are, they walked away from a contract with a major label (Columbia) because they didn't like the anti-piracy shenanigans that Columbia was up to.

The Bad Plus recently appeared at the Village Vanguard, and you can download a recording of their concert from the NPR Village Vanguard site.  I haven't listened to it yet, or to their most recent recording For All I Care, which includes Wendy Lewis' sinuous vocals.  The group's most conspicuous feature is their treatment of pop and rock songs.  The new album has a version of Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb'!  And here is clip of the group performing Black Sabbath's 'Iron Man'.



Okay, but what I really wanted to post about tonight are three albums I have listened to, with bassist Reid Anderson as leader. 
Dirty Show Tunes (1998) with Iverson on piano, Mark Turner on Sax, and Jorge Rossy on drums. 
Abolish Bad Architecture (1999) Jeff Ballard replaces Rossy on drums.  
The Vastness of Space (2000), with Ben Monder on guitar, Andrew D'Angelo on alto, Bill McHenry on Tenor, and Marlon Browden on drums. 
All three are superb recordings.  You can't help but love the title of the second one, and the titles of many of the compositions are equally entertaining.  The jazz is at once very accessible and refreshingly unfamiliar in texture.  Turner's tenor dominates the first two, and I think his playing here is more compelling and brilliant than anything I have heard elsewhere.  Iverson knows exactly where all the acupuncture points beneath the skin of the melodies, and he plays with a penetrating and rejuvenating touch.  The Vastness of Space is maybe a little more edgy, but only a little. 

I really dig these albums.  As far as I know, Anderson hasn't recorded again as leader, so when you download them for eMusic, you have a complete set.  Here is a sample from each album:
Not Sentimental/Dirty Show Tunes

Todas las cosas se van/Abolish Bad Architecture

Foxy/The Vastness of Space
 Please, if you like this music, buy the recordings.  And while you are at it, drop me a line. 

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Billy Hart Quartet @ The Village Vanguard


The Village Vanguard is surely the single most important venue in the history of modern jazz. Coltrane's famous recording there would almost be enough to confirm that. But then you add (roughly in order) Bill Evans last recording with Scott LaFaro, Sonny Rollins pianoless, Promethean trio, and Art Pepper's sprawling, nine disc collection of exquisite jazz punctuated by nervous chatter, and you have a lot of immortal genius pouring out of one fountain. You could survive an island exile for a long time with that, if they let you charge up your iPod.

The Vanguard is still at it. If you go to the NPR sponsored Vanguard site you will find a series of live recordings that are an hour plus in length. The most recent are available in MP3 format for free download, so you can add them to your permanent collection. All of the concerts, I believe, can be listened to in Real Player format. They also include MP3 files of interviews with the major players. Some of the artists featured there include Tom Harrell, Terence Blanchard (no kin, so far as I know, darn it), Cedar Walton, Chris Potter and Kenny Baron. That's a powerful lot of jazz to sample and enjoy free. I have long believed that giving away a lot of stuff is the best way to sell a lot more stuff. If you don't believe me, ask Microsoft.

Case in point is the most recent addition: The Billy Hart Quartet. Hart (b. 1940) has played his drums behind a lot of giants, including Miles Davis. The Quartet includes two players I have become interested in: Ethan Iverson on piano, and Mark Turner on tenor saxophone. Ben Street, whom I don't know yet, plays bass. The concert may not achieve immortality, but it includes a lot of very bold jazz composition. I suspect that Iverson is a driving force in the quartet. My reasons for thinking so, and for thinking that Iverson is the real thing, can be found at my earlier post on this fine keyboard player. But Mark Turner, whose Yam Yam I posted briefly on, dominates the sound.

Listening to that live recording encouraged me to shell out for The Billy Hart Quartet, with the same lineup. This is a very solid recording, inventive and provocative, but very accessible. The opening number, Mellow B, is an Iverson composition, and it is the kind of arrangement that makes the music seem suddenly new even to someone who swims in it daily. Hart is obviously worshipful of John Coltrane, as comes out on the Vanguard date. This album is another act of worship.

Here is a sample, a tribute to the pianist penned by Mark Turner. It also has the most compelling drum work from Hart. His cymbals talk to me here. Give it a listen, and don't let the disc get away from you.
Billy Hart/Iverson's Odyssey/The Billy Hart Quartet
My comments sections are like empty tombs right now. Leave me a few words, when you have the time.

ps. There is a great photo collection, including a shot of the Vanguard front.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Nonstandard Standards & Ethan Iverson


I just read on an eMusic post that JazzTimes is suspending publication. This probably says less about jazz than it does about the publishing industry, which is deep in trauma right now. But it does worry me.

The history of jazz begins around the turn of the twentieth century, and probably ends in the 1970's. That period constitutes a history because it has what Hegel called a dialectic: each generation establishing a statement to which the succeeding generation could reply. It is a common idea in modern aesthetics that such histories ought to go on without stop, but that is not usually how artistic genres work. Each reaches a point where further avenues of progress are limited or not available. I don't see anything in jazz that is really new after the avant garde movement and the fusion movement.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. It happened to classical music much earlier, and maybe it is the fate of all genres. But it means that contemporary jazz is left exploring the contours of existing jazz space.

What is to be done? Lenin's question is answered for jazz by such works as Jim Snidero's Standards + Plus, and pianist Ethan Iverson's Deconstruction Zone. The latter, Iverson's standards album, shows what is to be done. The greatness of jazz lies, it seems to this humble fan, in two virtues. First, it established a basic sound, a wide avenue in music space, that was persistantly and uniquely its own. Wynton Marsalis thinks that is rooted in blues and swing. Second, it developed a taste for mining all the riches of any music melody, and building new structures in any number of directions.

Iverson's trio certainly exemplifies the latter virtue. He takes a number of standards, and my goodness what he does with them! Who could have guessed what realms were open from starting points like 'I'm getting sentimental over you,' or 'Have you met Ms. Jones?'

Here are two Iverson samples. Reid Anderson plays bass, and Jorge Rossy is on drums.
Ethan Iverson/I'll Remember April/Deconstruction Zone
Ethan Iverson/Smoke Gets In Your Eyes/Deconstruction Zone
If you like these, get the whole thing. It's available at eMusic.