The Curious Case of Ethan Iverson: Jazz’s Bookish Trickster

Let’s talk about Ethan Iverson—a pianist who looks like he might shush you in a library but actually wants to blow your mind with a Monk tune, a snarky tweet, and a five-paragraph essay on Stravinsky’s posture. He’s not your average jazz cat. He’s not even your average jazz dog, if that’s a thing. Iverson is the kind of guy who can play like a bebop demon, write like a music critic on mushrooms (the philosophical kind), and still make you laugh without cracking a smile.

For the uninitiated: Ethan Iverson was one-third of The Bad Plus, the jazz trio that treated Nirvana and Aphex Twin like long-lost cousins of Ornette Coleman. They made music that said, “Yeah, we know all the rules. Now watch us juggle them while wearing clown shoes and quoting Wittgenstein.”

Iverson’s piano playing is… tricky to pin down. Sometimes it sounds like he’s trying to teach Chopin how to do judo. Other times, he’s clearly throwing down an elbow at Bill Evans while holding hands with Andrew Hill. His solos have this quality of pretending to be simple while secretly using graduate-level vocabulary. Like a crossword puzzle filled in by a guy who definitely knows who Adorno is but still watches “The Simpsons.”

And then there’s the writing. Oh boy, the writing. Iverson’s blog “Do the Math” isn’t just a blog. It’s like the diary of a jazz detective who moonlights as a humanities professor. You’ll be reading a dissection of a Sonny Rollins solo and suddenly stumble into a sidebar about classic noir films, high-level tennis theory, or something called “post-tonal fingerprinting.” It’s like reading liner notes from an alternate dimension where DownBeat is edited by Borges.

But beneath the wit, the glasses, and the ‘tight-lipped school principal’ demeanor lies a deep reverence for the music. Iverson’s work is thoughtful—he studies the tradition like an obsessed archivist, but he’s not afraid to break the glass and rearrange the fossils. He respects the past, but he doesn’t wear it like a badge. More like a scarf—fashionable, essential, but never in the way of the work.

In recent years, he’s stepped into more “grown-up” jazz settings—leading trios, working with legends, writing long-form compositions, and even composing for classical ensembles. It’s like the prankster put on a tuxedo, but he’s still got cartoon socks underneath. And thank god for that.

So here’s to Ethan Iverson: the jazz pianist who could beat you in a debate about Alban Berg and outdrink you at a dive bar, all before playing a set that makes you question whether time is real. If jazz had more weird uncles like him, we’d all be a lot smarter—and probably way more fun at parties.