Jazz
The Bad Plus play for the last time this December, with a multi-night residency at the Dakota in Minneapolis. Reid Anderson and Dave King announced the break-up in January and have been saying goodbye as they go since: the final stretch started on 20 September at the LowDown in Tulsa.
King explains where the conversation came from: “I came to Reid after a particularly grueling tour last summer. Touring is getting more expensive. The promoters are changing. There’s a change in jazz now, too.” And he reaches for an image: “Like Sisyphus, we’re pushing the rock up the hill and it’s not getting any easier to get out there and get people to the shows.” Behind the decision sit twenty-six years, eighteen albums and three different line-ups.
The group formed in 2000 with King on drums, Anderson on double bass and Ethan Iverson on piano, and made its name mixing original writing with covers of Stravinsky, Blondie, ABBA, Nirvana and Bacharach. Iverson left in 2017; Orrin Evans replaced him for three years and two records, and when he left too the group became a quartet with Chris Speed and Ben Monder, for two records more. The last is called “Complex Emotions”.
Anderson puts it in personal terms: “Bad Plus has been half of our lives. We’ve done an amazing amount of touring and managed to stay together all this time, not to mention the creative output and the cooperation you have to have between us. All those things take a toll.”
Both already know what comes next. Anderson wants to make electronic music —“I have a very clear path that I’d like to follow”— and King says he has finished records waiting, wants to put one out in 2027 and has one with a singer. With the ending already announced they toured with Chris Potter and Craig Taborn playing the repertoire of Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet.
Text by Aina Torrents