Pianist Ethan Iverson joins with esteemed players bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jack DeJohnette for their artful 2022 trio album Every Note Is True. An exceedingly adept improviser at home with jazz standards as well as his own inventive originals, Iverson is best known as a founding member of the boundary-pushing trio the Bad Plus, which he left in 2017. Where that group garnered acclaim for their adventurous jazz reworkings of modern rock and pop tunes, Iverson's solo work has been somewhat more nuanced. He has ...
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Pianist Ethan Iverson joins with esteemed players bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jack DeJohnette for their artful 2022 trio album Every Note Is True. An exceedingly adept improviser at home with jazz standards as well as his own inventive originals, Iverson is best known as a founding member of the boundary-pushing trio the Bad Plus, which he left in 2017. Where that group garnered acclaim for their adventurous jazz reworkings of modern rock and pop tunes, Iverson's solo work has been somewhat more nuanced. He has regularly moved between his love of atmospheric, classical-influenced avant-garde jazz (as he did on 2018's Temporary Kings with Mark Turner) and straight-ahead acoustic post-bop (as with 2021's Bud Powell in the 21st Century). With Every Note Is True, he explores both with original compositions that also evoke the broad-stroke style of his time with the Bad Plus. There's a surprising wryness to the album, best expressed by the opening "The More It Changes." A warm group vocal ballad led by Iverson with lyrics by his wife, writer Sarah Deming, it has the poignant warmth of friends at a party all gathered around a piano to commune over a beloved song. Other equally intimate instrumental moments follow, including a sparkling rendition of DeJohnette's "Blue" and Iverson's slow-churning hymn "The Eternal Verities," both of which evoke DeJohnette's own work for ECM in the '70s and early '80s. More exuberant tracks follow, including two bluesy, hard-swinging Thelonious Monk-esque numbers in "Merely Improbable" and "At the Bells and Motley." Primarily, Every Note Is True is a showcase for Iverson's warm camaraderie with his veteran collaborators. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi
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