Maybe you have a story about the first time you saw The Bad Plus.
For me, it’s a vivid memory: June 25, 2002, a one-off at The Village Vanguard under the auspices of the JVC Jazz Festival. I sat alone along the side rail at house right, whisky neat. Within the first couple of tunes, I was certain that this band was going to blow up, and thrilled at the prospect. This turned out to be more on-the-nose than I could have expected: also in the club that night was Yves Beauvais, then an A&R executive at Columbia Records. He was as knocked out as I was, and signed the band. The Bad Plus released its major-label debut, These Are the Vistas, in 2003.
It has become all too easy to forget how radical The Bad Plus sounded then. A high-octane acoustic trio — Reid Anderson on bass, Ethan Iverson on piano, and Dave King on drums — it presented a pugnacious front, not just unified in purpose but aggressively fused in its sound. The band was striking in its indivisibility, and in the assertion of a nonhierarchical model for the state-of-the-art piano trio.
The other thing that grabbed attention was the band’s choice of cover songs. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” Aphex Twin’s1 “Flim” — these were Gen X references, true to the life experience of Anderson and King. (Iverson, an unapologetic yet largely nonjudgmental jazz and classical partisan, came to rock and electronic music relatively late. He recently wrote about this, among other things, in a typically thoughtful post here on Substack.)
What was already clear on These Are the Vistas, though some observers would take a while to acknowledge it, was the audacious integrity of its original music. Each member of The Bad Plus contributed new music to its book, and some of these pieces were fantastic in their scope and execution. Reviewing that first album for JazzTimes, I noted that the album’s tour de force was “Silence is the Question,” an Anderson composition that “works a small motif through successively more imploring conjugations, culminating in a riot of colors.” I subsequently reviewed the band, live and on record, for The Village Voice and the New York Times, many times.
In 2017, when the band had its first major change of personnel, I broke the news at the public radio outlet where I was working at the time. Ethan Iverson was leaving, and Orrin Evans was taking over the piano chair. Working with the team at Jazz Night in America, I chronicled this transition, spending time in the studio as The Bad Plus 2.0 recorded its first album, Never Stop II.
And a few years later, when Evans stepped away after two studio albums and a boatload of shows, I covered the following change-up, as The Bad Plus became a quartet with guitarist Ben Monder and multi-reedist Chris Speed. “Different but the same” is one way to characterize the overhaul, which speaks both to the reinvention and the continuity inherent in the nuclear core of Anderson and King.
Last month, those two made an announcement: 2026 would be the final year for The Bad Plus. “We share this news with heavy hearts, but also with great pride in what we have accomplished,” read their statement. “It has been a privilege to share our music with the world and we leave behind a body of work that we could not be more proud of.” Naturally, as I read those words, I resolved to talk with Reid and Dave.
So that’s what you’ll hear in this audio episode of The Gig. We had a searching, in-depth, ultimately revealing interview about how The Bad Plus made it this far, what it has meant to them, and why they decided to bring the band’s journey to a close. They didn’t hold back; I think anyone who’s ever cared about the care and tending of a working band, or the sustainability of a jazz career, will want to hear this one.
Because Dave and Reid both hail from the Minneapolis area, and we’re living in this time, we also talked a bit about events on the ground there. (At the start of our conversation, it’s just Reid and myself. Dave popped on late because of what had been happening in his area.) This is an unfiltered conversation, and I’m excited to bring it to you. Needless to say, this band has meant something to me, in all of its iterations. I’m looking forward to the send-off, and will be watching for tour dates as they come.
For more information about The Bad Plus, here’s their website.
I previously attributed this song to Squarepusher, due to too-fast typing and heuristic association. The Gig regrets the error.
