Jeff Ballard
Coaches 20/21
Photo by Jimmy Katz
Ethan Iverson
Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson was a founding member of The Bad Plus, a game-changing collective with Reid Anderson and David King. The New York Times called TBP ??Better than anyone at melding the sensibilities of post-60?s jazz and indie rock.?
During his 17-year tenure TBP performed in venues as diverse as the Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, and Bonnaroo; collaborated with Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and the Mark Morris Dance Group; and created a faithful arrangement of Igor Stravinky’s The Rite of Spring and a radical reinvention of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction.
Iverson also has been in the critically-acclaimed Billy Hart quartet for well over a decade and occasionally performs with an elder statesman like Albert “Tootie” Heath or Ron Carter. For over 15 years Iverson’s website Do the Math has been a repository of musician-to-musician interviews and analysis, surely one reason Time Out New York selected Iverson as one of 25 essential New York jazz icons: “Perhaps NYC’s most thoughtful and passionate student of jazz tradition—the most admirable sort of artist-scholar.”
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In 2017 Iverson premiered the score “Pepperland” for the Mark Morris Dance Group and with Aaron Greenwald co-curated a major centennial celebration of Thelonious Monk at Duke University. In spring 2018 Iverson premiered Concerto to Scale with the American Composers Orchestra and in fall 2018 released Temporary Kings, a duo album with Mark Turner on ECM.
Other musicians Iverson has shared the stage with in the last two years include Miranda Cuckson, Tom Harrell, David Williams, Victor Lewis, Houston Person, Ben Street, Eric McPherson, Dayna Stephens, Thomas Morgan, Chris Potter, Joe Sanders, Melissa Aldana, Ravi Coltrane, Jorge Rossy, Josephine Bode, Dodo Kis, and Gerald Cleaver.
