the Bad Plus at Manchester Jazz Festival at RNCM, Concert Hall

About

The Bad Plus has spent more than a decade redefining what a piano-bass-drums trio can and should be, holding fast to its deeply collaborative ‘no-leader’ ethos with its avant-garde populism. The trio has reached audiences of all stripes with an uncompromising body of original music and some ingenious, genre-jumping covers. Layers of synth and electronic drum sounds can be heard prowling amid the trio’s signature acoustic palette, along with pulse-pounding anthems, bright-eyed melancholia, bold juxtapositions, tunefully mathy contortions, heady minimalism and a masterful sense of song. As ever, the sum effect is a welcome demolition of what listeners might expect from an instrumental trio.