Ethan Iverson Trio surprise, excite and challenge at Bray Jazz Festival

NY-based Ethan Iverson is a challenger! Perhaps best illustrated by his approach to the standard ‘All of Me’. At a single chord from the piano, the bass and tasty brushes set off, four-to-the-bar at a racing 310bpm, then Ethan very deliberately turned to face his audience. He eyeballed us then over the stable bass and drums played a sparse rising line of notes with his left hand, perhaps one every four bars, but often with longer intervals of silence. Only after well over a hundred bars of this linear movement had passed did he release the audience from his steely eye and employ his resting right hand to play a melodic line, three notes of which he repeated three times, and which suggested a familiar tune… then he abandoned that avenue and mixed melodic improvisation over his sporadic rising bass line with which he started. Finally playing a chorus of the tune that he had earlier suggested. For the closing ostinato (stubborn!) his right hand played melody while the left swept up and down the keyboard in waves! A masterclass in setting up a tune, the other musicians, and the audience. Everyone accepted his challenge and sat up straighter and listened more intently.

Throughout, he maximised a policy of surprise, thoroughly examining a well-known tune then rearranging its elements to reveal possibilities.

His arrangements of standards often pivoted on strategic omissions. ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ already has a spare, catchy theme but this arrangement used the two starting chords, leaving out the next three before finishing on the final three chords of the theme. So clever an edit that it was hardly apparent, but it gave extra swing to an already swinging tune.

The first number of the set was announced by a striking passage of atonal solo piano. The quirky original composition quickly moved into a jerky rhythmic theme counterpoised by a steady, half-time bass and drum figure, before settling into a bluesy vehicle for solos by piano, the appropriately spare bass of Jeppe Skovbakke, and an exchange of four bar breaks with the restless invention of drummer Sean Carpio, eventually returning to the haunting main theme. Next up, a seeming original tune eventually catalysed into a fine version of Jerome Kearn’s ‘All the Things You Are’ finishing on a majestic line of chords. A rocky ‘You Won’t Forget Me’ was another original, this one coming from an imagined TV series. Marking his love of film, ‘Laura’ boasted a suitably dark roiling piano bass intro. Thelonius Monk’s ‘Evidence’ was a brilliant vehicle for the three musicians, kicking off with a subtle quote of ‘Just Me, Just You’. Mal Waldron’s ‘Fire Waltz’ swung nicely. Next came a sensitive, straight melodic reading of ‘Killing Me Softly’. The third original composition was also title to a recent album, ‘Technically Acceptable’. The trio concluded proceedings by playing the first encore that Ethan has played since the pandemic, choosing ‘The Song Is You’, unrehearsed, and it was none the worse for that.

Iverson is assured, erudite, articulate, engaging, witty, has the timing of a fine comedian with great on-mic conversational patter that is dry and quirky.

When he turns his verbal intelligence to his instrument we see perhaps his most remarkable quality – touch. He displays the full range, from the most delicate, pellucid runs, to powerful crescendos. Despite his seemingly self-deprecatory album title ‘Technically Acceptable’ he can call on classical chops, intriguing harmonies, liquid melodies and as much space as the music needs. He trusts his fellow musicians, sharing that space and allows the overall performance to benefit from their top-level musicianship – receiving and returning the conversation.

The empathy within the trio suggests that they have been working together for many years, and while this is true of drummer, Carpio (Ireland) and bassist Skovbakke (Denmark) who have 18 years playing together, the trio met for the first time only two hours before the concert. The quirky arrangements, the stops, the hits, and general phrasing were perfectly memorised and played without manuscripts – truly remarkable. The music was wholly served by each member. The ensemble playing of bass and drums was matched by their wonderful solos, which were played musically and without ego.

Dorothy and George Jacob maintain the standard that they set twenty years ago when they established the Bray Jazz Festival. Good programming blends strong national and international performers. Ethan Iverson was a real coup, as this is his only European date.