Dramatic climaxes: For Ethan Iverson, it has always been a challenge to combine the contemporary jazz with a deep nod to the great masters of the past.
But while the US pianist, with his former band The Bad Plus, tackled well-known and frequently quoted rock and pop classics, he presents his idols’ jazz standards in a new guise during his performance with his new trio in the almost sold-out Stuttgart jazz club Bix.
Ethan Iverson is best known as a founding member of the avant-garde jazz trio The Bad Plus, which formed in 2000.
In recent years, he has also made a name for himself through his solo projects and his new trio with Thomas Morgan (double bass) and Kendrick Scott (drums). During their performance at the Bix Jazz Club, the three Americans aren’t afraid to deconstruct well-known jazz standards by Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, and Dizzy Gillespie, transforming them into their own musical cosmos.
With a multifaceted arrangement of rhythms and melody lines, they create an unorthodox urban jazz with numerous solo attacks on traditional and familiar traditions.
Full throttle from the start: At first glance, the music of the 52-year-old pianist from New York seems rather unspectacular, somewhat cold when reduced to a pure trio form.
From the very beginning, Ethan Iverson goes full throttle into the first round, as if he’d already completed a half-hour warm-up. The audience is also given little opportunity to warm up this evening. Much of it seems impulsive, but also incredibly mature. A pronounced desire for form points the way.
He is concerned with the appropriation of history, which he defines very openly. Kendrick Scott, in particular, impresses in this hour-and-a-half-long gig. The virtuosity with which the drummer continually finds new ways of influencing the sound, from striking the drumsticks to breaking the rhythm, is certainly spectacle-worthy, but always remains true to the theme.
Although the sometimes freely constructed melodies sound a bit detached at times, the evening as a whole has a form that subtly builds tension and reveals the songs’ unique characteristics.
There’s no doubt about it: this style of jazz has no expiration date, and despite its reliance on tried-and-tested melodies, it doesn’t feel like a knockoff or even a plagiarism.
However, the Ethan Iverson Trio doesn’t come close to the exciting and congenial sessions of the exceptional trio The Bad Plus.
Ethan Iverson (p)
Thomas Morgan (b)
Kendrick Scott (dr)
