The Bad Plus Premieres "On Sacred Ground"

Tuesday March 29, 2011

from The Thread

The Bad Plus Premieres “On Sacred Ground: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring”
By Chris Vitiello

During last Thursday’s public talk, the Bad Plus made it clear that they were interested in “playing every note” of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, rather than turning its opening themes into head arrangements to introduce improvisation in a more standard jazz fashion. But they were also careful to say that they intended to make Rite into a Bad Plus composition, not a Stravinsky cover.

During the talk, they showed off some swing and jazz grooves that only master improvisers could have located in the source material, though I admit I thought it was either silly or unnecessary for them to claim the work as their own and call it On Sacred Ground. It sounded like a marketing ploy. If you’re playing the Rite, you’re playing the Rite. Right? But in Reynolds Theater on March 26, when the world premiere rolled out in full, I found out just how wrong I’d been.

The Bad Plus made Rite their own in every way, from David King’s restless drumming to Reid Anderson’s rangy bass and Ethan Iverson’s catalyzing piano. The trio displayed extreme resourcefulness in paring down Stravinsky’s enhanced orchestra of 100+ players to three instruments, and crafted a legitimate rock show in the process. The visuals by film director Noah Hutton and lighting designer Cristina Guadalupe linked the work back to its balletic origins and even nodded to Disney’s Fantasia without explicit narrative or imagery.

The show began in darkness with the band behind a scrim that showed a blurry montage of sun, trees, and snowy ground. The silhouettes of the musicians came into view as a recorded piano played Rite’s famous opening notes with some subtle digital effects. Then the scrim rose and lights shined on the band as they leapt into the pounding beat of “The Augurs of Spring,” rendered highly percussive by the combined thrust of bass and drums, and reducing the short string strokes of the original to their essence.

The staging of the “Introduction” was as essential to the Bad Plus making Rite their own as their painstaking arrangement. Instead of walking out to applause as in a normal classical concert, the players seemed to appear like another projection. And by using a manipulated recording for the intro, they announced the driving “Augurs” as the true beginning of their piece, rather than Stravinsky’s lilting, high bassoon.

Read the full article here

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