Festivals by their very nature are celebrations. A jazz festival like Mt. Hood Community College’s come with the hearty feeling that includes competing school bands buzzy with energy and enthusiasm about this music, playing it together as a group, and competing with one another and getting recognition for the work they’ve done. It comes with the melding of legends and newcomers alike. It comes with the weight of continuum. It’s a snapshot of a moment of the future of the music, mirroring an all-too recognizable past. Jazz lives in the people who make it, who hear it, and in all who spread it, and it’s nice to see in the heart of these local groups the equal weight of bookings alongside internationally known acts. There’s a kind of charm about the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival that I should have anticipated based on this community-based enthusiasm that keeps this music alive. There’s the proper mix of local acts, imported legends, youth ensembles earning their stripes, and the town of folks dedicated to making it all happen. It’s that line of thinking that brought about having Minnesota-originating chameleons The Bad Plus close Saturday evening of the festival as part of the legendary group’s farewell tour.
Bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King have played together in this group since the turn of the 21st century, though its personnel has gone through assorted changes over the last quarter century. The latest iteration of The Bad Plus including guitarist Ben Monder and tenor saxophonist Chris Speed have been together since 2021 and have brought a different sort of trippy muscularity to this music. It’s constantly astounding how these spiralling compositions always hold together. It’s even moreso astounding that this will be among the last time it’ll happen.
Every time I hear Ben Monder, it always strikes me how perfectly he fits in this sound while still being so distinctly all his own. He’s an inimitable signature. I have never heard “Anthem for the Earnest” played more disgustingly [complimentary]. Whether he’s droning on in a contemplative haze or utterly shredding and wailing, he’s the unanticipated texture that coats these tunes. All the while, Speed’s saxophone provides the complimentary extra energetic bursts that sound at home in this band. Ultimately (and that’s a word that has a little more weight this time), The Bad Plus were the perfect conclusion to the Saturday night of a festival that continues to charm, and one of those moments in an ever-growing musical canon filled with bold, declarative statements that resonate and linger, even when they’re passing all the while.