Bad Plus adds two as the Minnesota-rooted jazz stars return for the holidays

Here is a welcome holiday treat: a new Bad Plus. Again.

The Twin Cities-launched, internationally revered jazz group returns to the Dakota Dec. 25-28 for its traditional Christmastime engagement with a new lineup, reformulated for the second time in four years.

Gone is pianist Orrin Evans, himself a replacement in 2017 for co-founder Ethan Iverson. Gone is the notion that, after 21 years, the Bad Plus is a piano trio.

The group is now a quartet, adding guitarist Ben Monder and tenor saxophonist Chris Speed, while Evans has resumed his longstanding solo career and leadership of his Grammy-nominated Captain Black Big Band.

"We were shocked [at his decision] because it felt pretty out of the blue," said bassist/composer Reid Anderson from New York.

"It was not like there was an event that occurred that made him want to leave," continued drummer/composer Dave King via Zoom from Minneapolis. "It was more like his desire to be working his own led projects again.

"The Bad Plus takes a lot of your creative space and a commitment timewise. That's probably why there are so few committed bands in jazz that work this much."

Anderson and King, the band's Golden Valley-reared cofounders, didn't think about disbanding. They spent a month or so deciding what to do next.

King said they saw "a chance to be what we always said the Bad Plus was — a democratic situation where we can bring in any musician." (The group enlisted singer Wendy Lewis and saxophonist Joshua Redman for past recording projects.) "And we feel like it still contains the DNA of what we started with: group music, original compositions, that kind of band chemistry."

After making a list, the 51-year-old cofounders reached out to two musicians of their generation based on friendships, not on fame or instrumentation.

The first call went to Monder, 59, whose credits include the Maria Schneider Orchestra and David Bowie's final album "BlackStar."

"He was unequivocal in his response," Anderson recalled. "The Bad Plus is a place where everybody gets to be themselves."

Added King: "We don't play with a sideman mentality."

Then they contacted Speed, 54, who leads his own combo and also plays with King, Anderson and alto sax veteran Tim Berne in a group called Broken Shadows.

The Bad Plus stalwarts are amped about what the additions bring.

"Ben has got an incredible range, from really atmospheric to metal shredding," Anderson said. "He's on the highest level in terms of musicianship, technically speaking, but he's also very soulful. He has an edge to him, he's a weirdo. It's the full package. He's the right guitar player to play with us."

King calls Speed an uncommon ensemble saxophonist.

"He's not the blustery, stand-in-front-of-the-band, proto big-personality tenor player," the drummer noted. "He's kind of an arty saxophone player, someone who is thinking conceptually all the time. That works with our kind of music.

"Chris and Ben can both turn on this thing that's real aggressive, emotional, torrential jazz, and both can be introspective very easily, great ballad players."

New album already finished

With 10 shows already in the books, the new incarnation has learned about 20 tunes, 60% of them new.

After its first two gigs in September, the quartet recorded a new album — its 15th studio project — that's expected in May on Edition, the London label that issued the Bad Plus' last disc with Evans, 2019's "Activate Infinity."

"Anyone who hears this new record will think it sounds exactly like the Bad Plus," Anderson observed. "Part of it is the musical driving force being generated by the drums and bass, which is a rare thing. I can honestly tell you that I'm feeling as much or more excited about the band than I ever have."

"I'd second that," King said. "It's great to see Reid creatively reinvigorated."

Like their new bandmates, Anderson and King also play in other situations. King, for one, works with Happy Apple, Dave King Trucking Company and guitarists Leo Kottke and Julian Lage. But they get something out of the Bad Plus that they don't in other gigs.

It's the notion of being in a collective, King said.

"This generates a fellowship that is hard to beat. To have a band that works as much as the Bad Plus and functions on a very high level and doesn't burn out is tremendously rare. It rewards you in so many ways."

Anderson figures it harks back to their teenage years of wanting to become serious jazz musicians.

"It's based on this kind of starry-eyed youthful imagining of what it could be," the bassist said. "We've built the thing on that."

Home for the holidays

Don't expect the new Bad Plus to play any rock covers from past albums, even though longtime fans could imagine how a guitar in the lineup might impact instrumental readings of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" or Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

"That would make too much sense," King said. "Other than an occasional encore of Aphex Twin's 'Flim,' we haven't been doing music other than our own for many years."

The Dakota is where Anderson, King and Iverson performed their first shows as the Bad Plus in 2000, after connecting earlier that year through a gig at St. Paul's now-defunct Artists' Quarter.

"The Dakota means the world to us," King proclaimed. "The support of the Twin Cities in general as a spiritual home to the group has been tremendous for us. We look forward to it every year. To present this new lineup is incredibly exciting."

The Dakota is where Anderson and King went to see live jazz as 15-year-olds after meeting at a showcase of young musicians at a suburban mall where both of their bands performed.

"The Dakota was an intrinsic part of falling in love with jazz and wanting to do this," said King.

Will the Dakota run, which traditionally begins on Christmas night, mean a holiday sacrifice for Monder, who lives in New York, and Speed, who lives in Los Angeles?

"Easy answer," King said. "Ben is Jewish and Chris is married to a Jewish woman, so no problem. Chris has a young daughter — she's only 4 or so — and she's excited to see the snow."

When: 7 & 9 p.m. Dec. 25-28.

Where: The Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.

Tickets: $30-$45, dakotacooks.com