They’ve Got the Beat

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Sixty years ago, Roy Haynes was at the forefront of a new generation of jazz drummers (that also included Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, and Art Blakey) who opened up entirely unprecedented vistas of percussion and rhythm. Now 82, Mr. Haynes, who is currently leading his quartet in a weeklong run at Birdland, still doesn’t sound like anyone else.

The night after Mr. Haynes opened, the Bad Plus, a trio that is also defined by its approach to rhythm — and also doesn’t sound like any other group — played a concert at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Although both groups are driven primarily by percussion, neither includes anything like a traditional drum solo in its music.

In his introduction of Mr. Haynes, Birdland majordomo Gianni Valenti noted that the drummer played at the club’s very first night, December 15, 1949, as a member of Charlie Parker’s quintet (and that Harry Belafonte, not yet a calypso singer, was a special guest vocalist). Appropriately, the opening set this week began with a 1949 composition by Parker, the F-minor melody identified by Bird discographers as “Tune X,” which was released in two takes under two different titles: “Diverse” and “Segment” (the latter of which itself draws on two Dizzy Gillespie tunes, “Bebop” and “Night in Tunisia”).

The opening set the tone for a roster of mostly jazz standards, including Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way” (in which the pianist Martin Bejerano played a long and obtuse intro and took most of the solo honors), Thelonious Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” (Mr. Bejerano’s unaccompanied solo here was surprisingly Bachlike), “I Can’t Get Started” by Duke (Vernon, not Ellington), which featured alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, and “James,” a Pat Metheny line played as a Sonny Rollins-style calypso.

Most drummers are expected to push the band from behind, but Mr. Haynes leads his quintet (which features Mr. Bejerano on piano, Mr. Shaw on saxophone, and David Wong on bass) more like a conductor, as if his drumsticks were batons. He reminds me of what the avant-gardist Butch Morris refers to as “conduction,” guiding and interacting with the other improvisers. Mr. Haynes plays more than rhythm — he gets melody, dynamics, phrasing, nuance, and, in his own sweet way, even harmony out of the trap drum kit. One senses that a conventional trade of fours would be a waste of his time, because he finds so many better ways to express himself: When Mr. Shaw, for instance, takes off on his alto saxophone, Mr. Haynes is a pilot in an accompanying airplane, and the two light off into the wild blue yonder like a pair of Blue Devils, flying in formation, sometimes in parallel lines, sometimes diverging. As noted, Mr. Haynes didn’t “solo” at all in this set, but his presence is always felt wherever the soloist needs him to be.

After speaking for the first time (to introduce his daughter, Leslie), Mr. Haynes tried to leave the stage, but the crowd demanded an encore. He obliged with his stylish arrangement of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” an imaginative treatment that suggests that Cole Porter, in his juxtaposition of minor and major, was the grandfather of modal bop. The treatment sounded like one of John Coltrane’s Eastern explorations. Mr. Haynes, who is the subject of a new four-CD boxed retrospective titled “A Life in Time” (Dreyfus Records), also related an anecdote about leaving his passport on a plane a few weeks ago when he and the quartet were returning from a concert in Italy; surprisingly, that wasn’t a lead-in for Charlie Parker’s “Passport,” also known as “Tune Y” and “Z.”

* * *

Although the Bad Plus is sometimes known for its “covers” (itself a rock-idiom term) of contemporary pop tunes, the group only played a couple of these in its 90-minute Zankel Hall concert on Wednesday night — “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, and “Life on Mars” by David Bowie, both of which are included on the trio’s recent album, “PROG,” released earlier this year by Heads Up. The Bad Plus (bassist Reid Anderson, drummer David King, and pianist Ethan Iverson) is certainly part of the recent movement of jazz groups tackling rock classics (done most brilliantly on Herbie Hancock’s new full-length take on the music of Joni Mitchell), but, more important, even when it’s performing originals, it plays acoustic jazz (symbolized, perhaps, on the cover of “PROG,” by an old-fashioned manual typewriter) with a rock attitude. This is jazz that rocks rather than swings.

In the same way that a heavymetal love song, such as it is, is called a “power ballad,” we might describe the Bad Plus’s style, a genre unto itself, as power jazz. It certainly isn’t like any previous form of acid jazz, smooth jazz, or fusion. It’s all achieved rhythmically, not by use of electronic instruments, or, increasingly, rock tunes. The rhythmic distinction is established by Mr. King, who plays almost everything completely staccato, right on top of the beat. There are some numbers with more of a familiar jazz feel, such as the bluesy “1979 Semi-Finalist” (part of the cycle that includes “1972 Bronze Medalist” and “1980 World Champion”), in which Mr. King plays with more shading and behind-thebeat phrasing — even swing.

Yet every element of the band’s music is based on the jazz ideal of melody and solos, theme and variation — even when one plays apart from the other two, it never seems like a jazz-style, chordal, or melody-based improvisation. One jazz ideal that the Bad Plus does utilize is a friendly competition between Messrs. Anderson and Iverson, the two dudes with Scandinavian-sounding names. The two often seem to be trying to top each other for audience approval, and Mr. Anderson has an advantage in that the crowd can actually see his face as he plays — not possible when you’re operating a 9-foot Steinway.

At times I was reminded of the somewhat vaudevillian style of the Gene Krupa-Charlie Ventura trio, with its tight unison, particularly in what seems to be their signature, “Physical Cities,” which closed the Zankel concert. The piece, also heard on the new album, winds up with a long segment in which the threesome pounds down hard on the beat, in perfect unison, in a manner that’s somewhat syncopated but, more impressively, perfectly synchronized. The three included this segment (diverse as it may be) in both the opening (“Let Our Garden Grow”) as well as the finale. It’s like an instrumental equivalent of trapeze acrobatics.

The Bad Plus’s only other “cover” was, coincidentally, another tune associated with Pat Metheny: Ornette Coleman’s “Song X,” which culminated in a section in which all three employed a variant, avant-garde technique: Mr. Anderson played under the bridge of his instrument, Mr. King scraped his cymbals with the tops of his drumsticks, and Mr. Iverson played inside the piano. Their arrangement also uses silences in a telling way that seems much more Bad Plus than Mr. Coleman, and the response of the audience was anything but silent. The group not only takes pop and turns it into art with an Andy Warhol-like sense of irony, but takes spinach and feeds it to the crowds as if it were ice cream. This was truly the Plus at their Baddest.

wfriedwald@nysun.com


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