American groundbreaking jazz trio The Bad Plus made of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King has been breaking down musical conventions since 2000 while balancing between genres and creating unique sound that embraces diversity as strength.
Their ninth album Made Possible will be released on September 25. It bares testimony of maturity of a band that has successfully held to a concept of a group with no leader for over a decade. All nine original compositions from this album are an interesting example of a constant movement between harmonic complexity and melodic satisfaction where musical interaction is put in front of individual solos.
This ensemble was described by the British The Guardian as follows: “If the Coen brothers put together a jazz trio, perhaps it would be like this, the comic and the dramatic rolled together”, while the New York Times wrote: “Better than anyone at mixing the sensibilities of post-60’s jazz and indie rock.”
And while jazz purists denounce them for musical audacity, liberal jazz fans admire their strong intensity sound and sometimes bombastic performances. They have spent the last ten years deconstructing pop, rock, country and classical compositions. Their new album includes the whole musical experience of that time, and The Bad Plus, as it was written by the magazine Blender, became an “acoustic jazz trio for the future”.