WORLD MUSIC/CRASHarts presents The Bad Plus, January 24 @ 8PM

Photo by Jay Fram

Photo by Jay Fram

WORLD MUSIC/CRASHarts presents

The Bad Plus

Performing the Boston premiere of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction
With specials guests Tim Berne, Ron Miles, and Sam Newsome

Saturday, January 24, 8pm,
Berklee Performance Center
WORLD MUSIC/CRASHarts on Facebook
The Bad Plus on Facebook

Boston, MA — World Music/CRASHarts presents the Bad Plus performing the Boston premiere of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction on Saturday, January 24, 8pm at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Ave., Boston. Tickets are $28-$42. For tickets and information call World Music/CRASHarts at (617) 876-4275 or buy online at www.WorldMusic.org.

Widely heralded for its innovative reworkings of rock, indie, electronica, and modernist classical music, the Bad Plus now turns to Ornette Coleman’s landmark 1972 album Science Fiction to honor the great master of free jazz. Bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King pay tribute to Coleman by boldly interpreting Science Fiction song for song, with help from an esteemed horn section of fine improvisers including Tim Berne, alto saxophone; Ron Miles, trumpet; and Sam Newsome, soprano saxophone.

Ornette Coleman’s 1972 album Science Fiction is widely considered a landmark recording-and especially so for the members of the Bad Plus. Coleman’s singular combination of melodic beauty and avant-garde openness is enhanced by overdubs, vocals, and a sonic production unlike any other jazz recording in existence. Science Fiction boldly insists on new spectrums of music that are possible. It is up to the interpreter to play themselves through Coleman’s melodies. The Bad Plus now turn to a jazz classic with Science Fiction to honor the great master of jazz avant-garde.

The band had the opportunity to perform selections from Science Fiction at the Walker Arts Center with Ornette Coleman himself in the audience. Coleman praised their ability to interpret his own music and artistic philosophy with the signature Bad Plus style, calling it “The performance I enjoyed most…they all sounded like individuals in the way they expressed it for themselves.”

Since the original album features a substantial horn presence, the Bad Plus is teaming up with an additional trio of accomplished musicians from three generations of jazz.  Saxophonist Tim Berne is an elder who was a crucial early influence of the Bad Plus, saxophonist Sam Newsome is a peer renowned for both his solo concerts and recordings throughout a very unique career, and trumpeter Ron Miles has had a prodigious career as a bandleader and collaborator with the likes of Bill Frisell. The Bad Plus’ bassist Reid Anderson will sing the two tunes with vocals as well as including minimal electronic elements.

The Bad Plus came together at the end of the 20th century and has avoided easy categorization ever since, winning critical acclaim and a legion of fans worldwide with its creativity, unique sound, and flair for live performance. Based in New York City, the intensely collaborative trio has constantly searched for rules to break and boundaries to cross, bridging genres and techniques while exploring the infinite possibilities of three exceptional musicians working in perfect sync. The Bad Plus have a well-earned reputation for pushing the limits on what is expected of a piano-bass-drums trio. The past 15 years have seen the genre-smashing band create a distinctive and original repertoire of inventive and exciting original music, along with iconoclastic covers of artists as diverse as Nirvana and Neil Young, Aphex Twin and Ornette Coleman. A genuinely leaderless trio, the Bad Plus is equal in every respect, from composition to performance to production. The interplay between these collaborators has marked the group’s work from the beginning, infusing it with carefully considered spontaneity, subtlety, style, and depth.

The Bad Plus’ 10th studio recording, Inevitable Western, sees bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King further honing the same conceptual base that fired their inception. Yet again they continue to explore myriad musical forms born of jazz along with any sonic source that forwards music that is uniquely the Bad Plus. Inevitable Western is an album where pop, blues, and folk meld with classic melodies and rhythmic innovation into that rarest of hybrids: intelligent music for the masses.

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