At the Vancouver Playhouse
The Vancouver International Jazz Festival presents The Bad Plus
The New Yorker was onto something when they called The Bad Plus “the Coen brothers of jazz: ironic and dead earnest, technically brilliant, beyond versatile…and pretty hard to pin down.” Now in their 21st year, founding members Reid Anderson bass and Dave King drums continue to push boundaries, embarking on a piano-less incarnation that features first-call creative heavyweights Ben Monder guitar and Chris Speed tenor sax. Their 15th album, released in the Fall of 2022, doubles as a self-titled debut for the sonically adventurous new dynamic. It’s the enduring chemistry of The Bad Plus, supercharged with new-band excitement. It’s also a novel sonic landscape for King and Anderson to drive their cutting-edge originals through, perhaps bringing arrangements of Radiohead, Aphex Twin, Nirvana, and Stravinsky along for the ride.
As they say themselves, “evolution is necessary for life and creativity. We’ve evolved, but we’re still The Bad Plus.”
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