Ethan Iverson goes Into The Dark for film noir inspired 606 world premiere

Ethan Iverson is perhaps best known as one-third of The Bad Plus, a ground-breaking combo that startled the world of jazz with their innovative repertoire, including a jazz trio version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. And although he left the band in 2017, Iverson has continued to push the boundaries. This evening’s solo gig turned out to be the world premiere of his new project Into the Dark – a double-edged title which refers both to the experience of entering a cinema and to the project’s noir/sci-fi themes.

No surprise, then, that there was a lot of minor-key drama going on. Iverson revealed himself to be a serious scholar of classic British telly, referring (for example) to the composer Dudley Simpson, who wrote incidental music for Doctor Who during its 1960s and 1970s heyday.

The bass notes of the piano, some of them unjustly neglected by lesser players, were given a proper workout on this occasion. In ‘Star Lighting’, thick, menacing chords in Iverson’s left hand rumbled ominously in pursuit of his terrified, scuttling right hand. Another inspired idea was his joining together of the themes for two murdered Lauras, the first being David Raksin’s for Laura, the famous noir movie, the second Angelo Badalamenti’s for Twin Peaks (Laura Palmer). The medley included a series of immense, rippling runs, reflecting the melodrama of both stories, the Twin Peaks section concluding with a restatement of the Laura melody but spine-chillingly mutated into the “wrong” key.

The second set consisted mostly of Iverson’s own compositions, but also the seldom-heard Michael Kamen theme to the classic BBC 1980s political thriller Edge of Darkness. Not for the first time this evening, you could imagine this was how Rachmaninov might have sounded if he’d ever improvised an accompaniment to a silent movie.