2/19/2025
Performances and Artists
The Bad Plus has been a hip name to know in – and beyond – jazz circles since the early 2000s, when the Minneapolis group earned coverage by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone for reimagining songs by such ’90s alternative darlings as Nirvana, Radiohead and Aphex Twin.
The talented instrumentalists’ primary focus, however, have always been on The Bad Plus’ original compositions – consistently interesting material that pushes the genre’s boundaries and keeps listeners on their toes.
Conceived as a trio, the band retained that configuration – piano, bass and drums – for more than 20 years. And then in 2021, founding members Reid Anderson (bass) and David King (drums) tried something different, recruiting guitarist Ben Monder and tenor saxophonist Chris Speed to join a remade, four-piece version of the band.
Ahead of The Bad Plus’ two March 22 performances at Myron’s, The Smith Center caught up with King to discuss that change, their plans for Las Vegas and more.
The Bad Plus has been a band since the year 2000. Have you guys ever played Las Vegas?
Never. The only history I have with Vegas was getting married there – in 1991, when I was 20 years old. I got married at the Graceland wedding chapel for $50.
We've been around a long time and played a lot of shows around the world – Alaska and Russia and Turkey and Latvia, you name it – so it's not common anymore to hear we’re going someplace new. So it’s like, Vegas, finally. This is going to be cool.
Will your two performances here be fairly different for people who may want to see both?
Completely different. We don't repeat tunes, so if we're doing two, we'll write completely different sets. Most of it will come from the last few records with the new quartet. And we do play several pieces from the old book, so if you like the original piano trio, we've adapted some of those tunes.
Was the decision to add guitar and sax, rather than simply finding a new pianist, made in part to keep pushing yourselves as musicians?
Absolutely, you hit it right. [Original pianist] Ethan [Iverson] is freaking brilliant And then we made two great records with [pianist] Oren Evans, who’s a great, old friend, And then during the pandemic, we decided to pivot. This is a chance for us to have a whole new set of tools that also builds on the projects we've done with other people – we've done a quartet with Bill Frisell, we've done a quartet with Kurt Rosenwinkel and we've done a quartet with Joshua Redman.
Saxophone and guitar was what we decided on, and we wanted to work with friends and people that we respect. Chris and Ben were at the top of that list. We’ve worked with them for years in other projects, so everyone had that familial energy. We started rehearsing and developing the sound. We were reborn in some ways, but it also retains our Bad Plus composer language. So it breathes new life, and at the same time it continues our trajectory.
The Bad Plus got some good press early on by virtue of covering songs that weren’t traditionally part of the jazz world.
Absolutely, and we still retain a sort of position in the indie rock and post-rock circles, which is something I’m proud of, the diversity of our audiences. We’ve always thought of that as a part of the jazz tradition, approaching some music that a lot of jazz musicians wouldn't approach. We would find things like “Heart of Glass” by Blondie or “Velouria” by Pixies, and then it's like, how do you make that your own?
It got so much attention, I believe, because we did it differently than a lot of jazz groups approach pop music. In ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” we found fertile ground to explore improvising and arrangement. And frankly, I think that was refreshing to some audiences that were tired of the jazz standard language
Our original music is the same way. We want to challenge you when you come to see The Bad Plus. One song to the next might not sound remotely like each other, yet it all sounds like us. And I think our records speak to that – the pieces are diverse, but there's a through-line to them and there’s always something happening.
What would you say to someone who isn’t familiar with The Bad Plus but might be considering coming to your show?
We have our hands in a lot of different schools of music.
If they choose, a musician can ignore all the music around them from their era and their time, but another way to go about it is to make music based on the quilt of your life – Stravinsky, Ornette Coleman, Led Zeppelin, A Tribe Called Quest, Aphex Twin, all these things. We've always allowed in any influence to make a new personal language of our own.
So if you’re looking for adventurous modern music that doesn't have vocals, we might be your band.