Music Review: The Bad Plus at Bellevue Jazz Festival

I'm not sure whether it is simply because the Bad Plus draws an audience that skews younger than your typical jazz show crowd or that the Minneapolis trio's unrelenting deconstructions of bop, free jazz and fusion are capable of stirring up a visceral emotional response. Whatever the reason, the audience for the group's Bellevue Jazz Festival showcase Friday night was a lot rowdier than I had anticipated. There was a healthy amount of good-natured heckling, a bit of hooting, a bit of hollering, and one gent even flashed the heavy metal devil horns (a pointer and pinky finger salute) after some particularly meaty tunes.

This sort of loose atmosphere would be expected had the trio scattered their set list with any number of the cover songs it has become well-known for (the Bad Plus has tackled everyone one from Aphex Twin to the Bee Gees over the course of six studio albums). But almost the entire program was made up of material written by the members of the group (pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King), with an angular take on the Rodgers and Hart standard "Have You Met Miss Jones?" thrown in for good measure.

It's hard not to react strongly to the Bad Plus. The band members throw themselves wholly into their playing, physically reacting to the peaks and valleys of each song. Iverson's whole body moved with the music. Throughout the set, he lifted one foot after the other about six inches off the ground, hovering above the piano bench in a crouch, and pounding on the keys with his fists or forearms for added emphasis. Anderson, too, often hunched over his bass as he plucked out notes during particularly dramatic moments.

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For all those members' efforts, though, it was hard for me to pull my attention away from King. It was not only the beatific grin he wore for almost the whole evening but also because it looked like he was about to burst out of his skin at certain moments, straining not to attack his kit with the brute force of a speed metal drummer. When King finally did let loose on a couple of solos, I could feel it in my spine.

The highlight of the evening was in hearing the healthy amount of new material that the trio has apparently recorded for release this fall. The songs showed some impressive growth for the group while still maintaining a playful edge. One track written by Anderson delved into a disco rhythm at moments, and another ghostly and moody ballad revolved around the sound of King making a pair of E.T. walkie-talkies squelch and feed back.

Interspersed among these new works were fine renditions of tracks from the band's back catalog. Some, like "Mint" (taken from the band's 2007 release Prog) were pulled in new directions through the keen improvisation of Iverson. Others held much closer to how they were presented on record, like the sole encore of the evening, "Physical Cities," which centers on a startling bit of syncopation by all three members of the group. They locked in on the quick rat-tat-tat hits, never once looking at each other, and never once dropping out of sync. It may have been a bit of theatrics on their part, but it certainly worked, eliciting the loudest crowd response of the night.