Brad Mehldau: Highway Rider

For a pianist who not only demonstrated remarkable promise, but actually began delivering on it at a very early stage in his career with what would ultimately become his five-part Art of the Trio (Warner Bros.) series, Brad Mehldau's side projects have—with the exception of the solo Live in Tokyo (Nonesuch, 2004)—met with mixed reactions. Perhaps it's because of his emergence as one of modern jazz's most distinctive and popular interpreters of both contemporary song and standard material in a trio setting, that placed unfair expectations on seemingly tangential projects like the concept-based Places (Warner Bros, 2000). The unexpected diversion of Largo (Warner Bros., 2002), in particular, was met with some curiosity as, for the first time, Mehldau expanded into larger musical environs—electrified territories, even—with acclaimed producer/multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion (Kanye West, Robyn Hitchcock, Aimee Mann). Highway Rider reunites Mehldau with Brion for an album that's even more ambitious than Largo—and, despite their first collaboration's many strong points, a far more successful one.

Mehldau's recent work writing for orchestra—The Brady Bunch Variations for Orchestre Natonal D'Îsle-de-France, and the song-cycle Love Sublime (Nonesuch, 2006), with soprano René Fleming, amongst others—has clearly given Mehldau the confidence to find, with Highway Rider, a nexus point where form-based improvisation and through-composition meet. Based around the preexisting chemistry of his regular trio with bassist FLY and drummer Jeff Ballard, but expanding to a quintet with longtime friend Joshua Redman on saxophones and, back from Largo, drummer Matt Chamberlain, Highway Rider is a double-disc suite that's as much a soundtrack to an imaginary film as anything Mehldau's ever done.

It's also the most fully realized original music the pianist has written to date, as unequivocally American as Aaron Copland, Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, despite citing the influence of European Romantics like Strauss, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, in addition to more eclectic sources. Mehldau's voice as a composer has been gradually emerging with original music contributed to trio recordings like Live (Nonesuch, 2008) and House on Hill (Nonesuch, 2006), but with Highway Rider, Mehldau the composer has clearly arrived.

What distances Highway Rider from stereotypical (and often saccharine) "jazz with strings" projects—with Dan Coleman leading a chamber orchestra on much of the disc—is the sense of immediacy that Brion has achieved by recording the orchestra and jazz quintet together—one of Mehldau's original goals for the project. This isn't a jazz quintet blowing and an orchestra then layered over top; this is fully integrated music, where the soloing is as spontaneous as it needs to be, even when the orchestra creates a firm and fixed foundation. Mehldau's solo on the first half of "We'll Cross the River Together" builds to an idiosyncratic, block chord-driven climax, but it's his orchestration which turns this relatively simple, repeating set of eight chords into a masterful tour de force that's not only one of Highway Rider's most dramatic moments, but one that then resolves into one of its most tender interludes. A second half, with gradually building tension from the strings and the turbulent double-drumming of Ballard and Chamberlain, leads to a second climax of equal strength, this time courtesy of Redman.

As lush as Mehldau's orchestration is throughout Highway Rider, he knows how to create a narrative arc through dynamics and breaking the ensemble down. "Capriccio" starts with nothing more than piano—though, as ever, Mehldau's virtuosity leads to the belief that it's being played by two hands until an emergent melody makes it clear he's playing it with only one. Hand percussion—quite literally, with clapping driving much of the tune—and Redman's soprano develop the theme until Mehldau takes over for a brief but quirky solo, sounding not unlike Oregon in instrumentation, but absolutely unlike it in Mehldau's voicings, which turn another deceptively simple, descending four-chord structure into something else entirely. Similarly, "The Falcon Will Fly Again," a longer piece but, again, with drastically reduced instrumentation, leads from lengthy piano and saxophone solos to a theme sung by members of the group and The Fleurettes, and an ending that dissolves into some relaxed banter amongst the group that makes it clear that as serious as much of this music sounds, it's being made by a group of people who are having fun.

Sonically, Highway Rider bears some resemblance to Largo, in particular Mehldau's use of pump organ, synth and orchestral bells on certain tracks, but it feels somehow more natural and better integrated this time around. Perhaps the more focused compositional approach of the album makes its expanded use of texture work more naturally.

Despite breaks between songs, the music flows and feels like a continuous suite, and is certainly best experienced as such. The folkloric piano solo, "At the Tollbooth," acts as a brief interlude between the slower-tempo of "Don't Be Sad," with hints of gospel driving its form, and the title track, a more propulsive trio tune with subtle aural enhancements creating a soft cushion beneath Mehldau's extended solo. "Into the City" also narrows the focus down to Mehldau's trio, with Grenadier doubling, alternately, the pianist's left and right hands on a knotty, riff-based tune that may reduce the album's broader textural expanse, but demonstrates just how vibrant and progressive this working trio is, with Ballard almost literally on fire.

As Mehldau combines in-the-moment playing with carefully structured form, and repeated chordal and melodic motifs that continue to resurface throughout Highway Rider's 100 minutes, the album builds to a climax on "Always Returning," before ending on a softer, tone-poem note that incorporates Mehldau's inherent classicism and somehow, on repeated listens, brings Highway Rider full circle. The music may bear no real resemblance to it, but in scope Highway Rider is Mehldau's Secret Story (Nonesuch, 1992), a fan favorite for Pat Metheny and a milestone in terms of ambition and scope until the guitarist reached a new level with The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005) and, most recently, Orchestrion (Nonesuch, 2010).

It's no coincidence, then, that Mehldau and his trio collaborated with Metheny on Metheny Mehldau (Nonesuch, 2006) and Quartet (Nonesuch, 2007). That the pianist's overall career choice—focusing largely as he has on solo and trio works—has been almost diametrically opposed to Metheny's greater compositional ambitions and orchestrations seems somehow less so now, with the release of Highway Rider. In its almost perfect mix of form and freedom, Highway Rider manages to be both Mehldau's most personal and most broad-scoped album to date, and surely one that will remain a classic amongst his discography, no matter what's to come.

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