ORIGINALLY from Minneapois, jazz trio The Bad Plus bridge a gap between indie rock and jazz improvisation. Over seven albums of mostly original music, the band also has re-arranged Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ and Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ as well as classics by David Bowie, Blondie, Bacharach and Aphex Twin. The trio’s jazz explorations of rock classics led to one Rolling Stone Magazine reviewer to gush that The Bad Plus are, “about as badass as highbrow gets”.
The new show, On Sacred Ground sees the piano trio take on Igor Stravinsky’s iconic Rite of Spring. The famed ballet caused a riot on its premiere, opened the door to 20th Century music and featured on Disney’s Fantasia.
Drummer with The Bad Plus explained to NPR radio why the trio wanted to perform Stravinsky’s work, “We made a record called ‘For All I care’ a few years ago in which we dipped our toe into contemporary classical music deconstructions”. One of these pieces was Stravinsky’s Opollo. “We thought, well, let’s just go all the way and try and tackle the monster.”
The Monster referenced is The Rite of Spring in its entirety. The band rehearsed their version of the ballet for eight months. “What we’re trying to do, essentially, is turn the piece into something of our own,” says pianist Ethan Iverson. “The size of the work is what’s so different this time. After doing a three-or-four-minute excerpt from a ballet, now we’re doing a gigantic piece of music. The concept is kind of like learning 28 little pieces of music that are all really different and don’t repeat!”
Virtuoso, playful and visceral, The Bad Plus multi-media show, On Sacred Ground, breathes new life into a popular masterpiece. The Bad Plus perform On Sacred Ground at The Belltable this Wednesday May 30.
