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As New York jazz fanatics will discover tonight, whether burning through lucid deconstructions of ABBA and Nirvana, complex thickets of improvisation, or simply relishing a beautiful melody, powerhouse trio “The Bad Plus” never played a lick that wasn’t madly enticing or entirely original.
For their debut as part of the French Insitute/Alliance Francaise’s Second Annual “Crossing the Line” festival, bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King pair their wildly eclectic sound with another like-minded artist — the brilliant French pianist Benoît Delbecq — for an evening of jazz turned inside-out. Tickets are $25 for the 8:30 p.m. performance and are available through Ticketmaster. Florence Gould Hall is at 55 E. 59th St.
“Crossing the Line” has been hailed by the New York Times as “one of the fall’s most exciting and thought provoking performance events.” Returning for its second year, the festival once again presents three weeks of inter-disciplinary contemporary works by artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. The Festival runs from Sept. 16 to October 5, with dozens of cultural performances in the fields of art, theater and dance held at venues throughout the city. A full schedule of events can be found at www.fiaf.org.
“Our festival performances to date have been playing to sold-out houses,” says festival co-curator Lili Chopra. “And when you are playing to sold-out houses in New York, one of the cultural capitols of the world, you know you are doing something right.”
Adds co-curator Simon Dove: “New Yorkers truly crave the new and the innovative. They are voracious audiences. It is crazy and gratifying.”
New this year, the French Institute/Alliance Francaise (FIAF) and “Crossing the Line” have co-produced and commissioned a number of new pieces for the festival, including one that debuts tonight: a new work by The Bad Plus based on a song by French icon Serge Gainsbourg.
Next week, a new dance piece commissioned by the festival from acclaimed French choreographer Christian Rizzo will have its New York premiere at Brooklyn’s Center for Performance Research on September 25-27.
And another commissioned piece is by Paris-based performance artist Ivana Müller, who has created a special video work for the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop which will run throughout the festival.
“Food Futures,” a weekend of culinary-based programs hosted by French television personality and chef Julie Andrieu is also new to this year’s festival and will explore new techniques in the culinary arts with top innovative chefs from New York and France on September 27 and 28.
In his performance tonight, Delbecq begins with a solo set, followed by a duet with Bad Plus drummer David King before the full trio converges to perform a set that will include the special FIAF commission based on “Ballade de Melody Nelson,” by French singer/songwriter, actor, and provocateur Serge Gainsbourg.
Called “a pianist who deserves attention” in a wild understatement by the Village Voice, Delbecq, perhaps the most innovative French pianist of this generation, creates his own music using ideas and techniques from contemporary, classical, jazz, Pygmy polyphony, European improv, and other sources. For his concerts, he prepares the piano with various materials such as eraser bits and carved wooden twigs; the result is a complex, spacious sound that hardly seems to be emanating from a single instrument.
"Delbecq teases fascinating timbral qualities out of the keyboard, making it sound variously like a music box, a log drum, or a gamelan orchestra," according to Jazziz magazine. On his latest album “Nu-turn,” Delbecq stretches out a solo on a Steinway D in 8 astonishing structured improvisations; the final, 12-minute composition is a computer-created ambient "remix" that completely transforms the solo material. Recorded in a small concert hall directly to 6 channel DSD, the piano sound is remarkably realistic, and the music beguiling in its rhythmic-melodic-timbral meldings. Dexterous, brainy, evanescent and strangely moving, “Nu-turn” has intrigued audiophiles ready for new experiences and appealed to fans of new music beyond category.
Highly acclaimed in Europe, Delbecq leads or co-leads a number of bands (The Recyclers, Karket, Ambitronix, PianoBook) and has releases on Naive, Plush, Deux Z and other labels. He has three previous releases on Songlines: two duos with Vancouver clarinetist Francois Houle Nancali, SGL 1519, and Dice Thrown, SGL 1538), and one leading the Delbecq 5 (Pursuit, SGL 1529), about which Popmatters.com said: "...in the best sense, the newest in the new. It manages to push boundaries, sound fresh and smart, and be thoroughly and thoughtfully entertaining." Both Pursuit and Dice Thrown received “Chocs de l’Annee” (accorded the 12 best French jazz releases of the year) from the influential magazine Jazzman, “Pursuit” was selected by Jazzman's critics as one of the 50 outstanding records of the 1990s, and “Nu-turn” has already garnered a Choc (5 star) review from Jazzman's editor.
The Bad Plus are a jazz trio from the United States, consisting of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer Dave King. Iverson, Anderson and King first played together in 1989, establishing The Bad Plus in 2000. The band recorded their first album, a self-titled effort released on Fresh Sound, after playing only three gigs together. A live performance at the Village Vanguard was heard by Columbia Records representative Yves Beauvais, and the band was signed to Columbia in 2002. Their major label debut album, These Are the Vistas (2003), was followed by Give in 2004 and Suspicious Activity? in 2005. After parting ways with Columbia, the group signed to Heads Up Records (a division of Telarc), and released the album Prog on May 8, 2007. In early Spring of 2008 they finished recording their next studio album, which they expect to be released in Fall of 2008. It is expected to feature a classical feel on some tracks on behalf of the pianist Ethan Iverson, who is classically trained.
The trio's music combines elements of modern Avant-garde jazz with rock and pop influences. The band have recorded versions of songs by Nirvana, Aphex Twin, Blondie, Ornette Coleman, Pixies, Rush, Tears for Fears, Neil Young, David Bowie, Interpol, and Black Sabbath. Blunt Object: Live in Tokyo includes a cover of Queen's "We Are the Champions" along with the jazz standard "My Funny Valentine". “Suspicious Activity?” contains a cover of the theme from "Chariots of Fire", while a version of "Karma Police" by Radiohead appeared on the 2006 album Exit Music: Songs with Radio Heads.
Posted September 20th, 2008 by TomWinkles
