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

The Bad Plus performs "On Sacred Ground" (photo: Darryl Pitt)

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 Bad Plus perform "On Sacred Ground" (photo: Darryl Pitt)

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.

King’s incessant shifting of accents on his cymbals kept the driving rhythm of “Augurs” from sounding hollow or clocklike. Anderson’s bass ended up being at least as responsible for the beat, and King’s sheer activity made the tempo seem a lot faster than it really was.

“Spring Rounds” was the next section the band transformed in a way that Stravinsky never could have imagined. Instead of flute and woodwinds, the bass and piano handled the beginning, while King jiggled a plastic toy with a two-tone bell inside it. Anderson’s decisively plucked bass notes introduced a slowed-down Coltrane feel that the band settled into. Stravinsky’s strings became a trim bass line that could easily have come out of Jimmy Garrison’s instrument in the early ‘60s. Iverson somehow sounded like McCoy Tyner, too, as King danced in front of and behind the beat.

The Bad Plus performs "On Sacred Ground" (photo: Darryl Pitt)

The naturalistic visuals that accompanied the first movement gave way to sacrificial and ritual ones in the second, where King’s athleticism and Anderson’s precision were particularly impressive. Anderson had to channel the many instruments of the original score, and Iverson held things together in these choppy waters. When they finished, they looked one part relieved (“We got through it!”) and two parts excited (“That was fun!”), as the audience roared to life with at least one audible war-whoop answering the final drum crash.

After this intense and concise piece of music, the Bad Plus took a relaxed-feeling and well-earned victory lap with a mini-set of their work over two encores. It must have felt good to improvise again, and to be playful outside the written parameters of a score, though they each quoted bits of Rite. Anderson restated the bassoon introduction in his solo on “2 PM,” and Iverson did the same at the very end of their cover of Aphex Twin’s “Flim,” their final tune.

The Bad Plus performs "On Sacred Ground" (photo: Darryl Pitt)

But happily, On Sacred Ground was the highlight of the night. It was Stravinsky’s notes, but it sure as hell wasn’t Stravinsky. The Bad Plus left us with the exciting feeling of having seen something special being born. It’s hard to imagine a modern piece of music being as violently transformative as Rite in 1913, but the Bad Plus definitely laid something new and provocative on us, which is just about as tough as sparking a riot in 2011.