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Brad Mehldau
Pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also has a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that includes both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle and Places might be called “concept” albums. They are made up exclusively of original material and have central themes that hover over the compositions. Other Mehldau recordings include Largo, a collaborative effort with the innovative musician and producer Jon Brion, and Anything Goes—a trio outing with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy.
His first record for Nonesuch, Brad Mehldau Live in Tokyo, was released in 2004. After ten rewarding years with Rossy playing in Mehldau’s regular trio, drummer Jeff Ballard joined the band in 2005. The label released its first album from the Brad Mehldau Trio—Day is Done—in 2005.
Mehldau’s musical personality forms a dichotomy. He is first and foremost an improviser, and greatly cherishes the surprise and wonder that can occur from a spontaneous musical idea that is expressed directly, in real time. But he also has a deep fascination for the formal architecture of music, and it informs everything he plays. In his most inspired playing, the actual structure of his musical thought serves as an expressive device. As he plays, he listens to how ideas unwind, and the order in which they reveal themselves. Each tune has a strongly felt narrative arch, whether it expresses itself in a beginning, an end, or something left intentionally open-ended. The two sides of Mehldau’s personality—the improviser and the formalist—play off each other, and the effect is often something like controlled chaos.
Mehldau has performed around the world at a steady pace since the mid-1990s, with his trio and as a solo pianist. His performances convey a wide range of expression. There is often an intellectual rigor to the continuous process of abstraction that may take place on a given tune, and a certain density of information. That could be followed by a stripped down, emotionally direct ballad. Mehldau favors juxtaposing extremes. He has attracted a sizeable following over the years, one that has grown to expect a singular, intense experience in his performance.
In addition to his trio and solo projects, Mehldau has worked with a number of great jazz musicians, including a rewarding gig with saxophonist Joshua Redman’s band for two years, recording and concerts with Charlie Haden and Lee Konitz, and recording as a sideman with the likes of Wayne Shorter, John Scofield, and Charles Lloyd.
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A Conversation with Brad Mehldau
by AAJ Staff
This article was first published at All About Jazz in 2002. All About Jazz: Do you recall your first jazz record? Brad Mehldau: I think the first real jazz record I listened to was an Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass duo album, one of those Pablo things. A friend of my father's bought it for me when I was eleven years old. Oscar was really the first guy I really listened to. That was the one. ...
read moreChris Potter: Eagle's Point
by Chris May
The question that comes to mind after listening to Eagle's Point is this: why have the four musicians, who have known each other since the 1990s, never recorded together before? For the combination of Chris Potter, Brad Mehldau, John Patitucci and Brian Blade is a real meeting of minds; the stars are in perfect alignment. Potter's previous release, Got The Keys To The Kingdom (Edition, 2023), was a live set, recorded at New York's Village Vanguard, and ...
read moreBrad Mehldau: Maybe As His Skies Are Wide
by Mike Jacobs
Long known for his absolute adventurousness, there isn't much that Brad Mehldau hasn't stylistically encompassed. Still, when the pianist released an exploration of the progressive favorites of his youth,--Jacob's Ladder (Nonesuch, 2022)--the results were like nothing else in his catalog. Among the album's most compelling tracks is the re-envisioning of a single famous melodic line from Rush's classic “Tom Sawyer." Mehldau loops it, reharmonizes it, displaces it rhythmically and improvises over all these newfound twists and turns, creating something truly ...
read moreBig Label Bangers
by Patrick Burnette
The boys love chasing after the esoteric, the brand new, the little known. But sometime, we also like to talk about the, well, big label bangers. That is, big labels in jazz terms, which really means small subsidiary branches of huge media conglomerates, but let's not get into that now. Some famous names are back this episode and we talk about their latest releases--sometimes a great deal later than their date of death.Playlist Discussion of Brandee Younger's album ...
read moreBrad Mehldau Live at The Falcon
by Mike Jurkovic
Brad Mehldau The Falcon Marlboro, NY August 28, 2023 Twenty four hours after a raucous, spirit raising performance by South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and his trio mates, drummer Francisco Mela and bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere the evening began quietly like a haiku. Brad Mehldau thanked his Hudson Valley neighbors, turned, took the bench and let the dimming light of late August shade his summer reflection. The insistent motif of “John Boy" rang out ...
read moreBrad Mehldau: Formation: Building A Personal Canon, Part One
by Ian Patterson
Formation: Building A Personal Canon, Part One Brad Mehldau 312 Pages ISBN: 9781800503137 Equinox Publishing 2023 In the considerable wake of Keith Jarrett, it is hard to think of another pianist as influential or as widely imitated as Brad Mehldau. Throughout a career that began in the early '90s, taking flight with his acclaimed Art Of The Trio albums, Mehldau has built his reputation--like Jarrett before him--as a jazz improvisor par ...
read moreBrad Mehldau: Your Mother Should Know
by Brad Mehldau
In his book, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, the scholar Harold Bloom confronted the question of what makes particular books endure through the ages, long surpassing the time and place in which they were written: The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange. If we look ...
read moreJazz Musician of the Day: Brad Mehldau
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Brad Mehldau's birthday today!
Pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also has a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that includes both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle ...
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World-Renowned Smoke Jazz Club Announces August Line-Up Including Johnathan Blake’s Latest Blue Note Album, Performances By Special Guests Brad Mehldau, Lenny White, Emmet Cohen, And More
Source:
AMT Public Relations
Rated the #1 Jazz Club in New York City (Secret NYC), Smoke Jazz Club welcomes some of today’s leading artists to the stage during the month of August. SMOKE is thrilled to welcome back its former Hammond B-3 organist-in-residence Emmet Cohen this time welcoming beloved saxophonist Houston Person for one-night only Aug 23. Johnathan Blake, one of the most accomplished drummers of his generation, celebrates his sophomore Blue Note album in a four-night run Aug 24-27. For the most updated ...
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Brad Mehldau & Ian Bostridge Present 'The Folly Of Desire'
Source:
Vivo Musique Internationale
NEW SONG CYCLE INQUIRING THE LIMITS OF SEXUAL FREEDOM Brad Mehldau presents The Folly of Desire, a song cycle inquiring the limits of sexual freedom in a post-#MeToo political age, together with tenor Ian Bostridge, one of the greatest song interpreters of our times. Setting poetry by Blake, Yeats, Shakespeare, Brecht, Goethe, Auden and Cummings, Mehldau’s music shifts seamlessly between a jazz idiom and Classical art song, and the work explores a theme as timeless as it is topical. The ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Brad Mehldau
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Brad Mehldau's birthday today!
Pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also has a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that includes both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Brad Mehldau
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Brad Mehldau's birthday today!
Pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also has a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that includes both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle ...
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'MTB - Consenting Adults,' The Seminal Criss Cross Album Released On 180 Gram Vinyl By Elemental Music
Source:
Elemental Music
For the first time ever on vinyl, we edited this beautiful Gatefold 2-LP set with High Quality 180 gram Audiophile Vinyl. Recorded at RPM Studio, New York City on December 26, 1994 and mastered for vinyl and lacquer cutting by the great Bernie Grundman Studios. This celebrated release will be available for the second drop of Record Store Day on July 17th. Music writer and regular collaborator at Downbeat and Jazziz, Ted Panken, introduces this seminal Criss Cross album as ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Brad Mehldau
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Brad Mehldau's birthday today!
Pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also has a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that includes both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle ...
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Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride & Brian Blade Reunite After 26 Years with RoundAgain, out now on Nonesuch
Source:
Nonesuch Publicity
The members of the original Joshua Redman Quartet—Redman (saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums)—reunite with the July 10, 2020 release of RoundAgain, the group’s first recording since 1994’s MoodSwing. The album features seven newly composed songs: three from Redman, two from Mehldau, and one each from McBride and Blade. On Wednesday, July 22 at 4pm ET on the NPR Music YouTube channel, NPR Music and Jazz Night In America will host a live chat and ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Brad Mehldau
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Brad Mehldau's birthday today!
Pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also has a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that includes both solo piano and trio songs... Read more. ...
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Charlie Haden And Brad Mehldau Duo, At Long Last
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Charlie Haden & Brad Mehldau, Long Ago and Far Away (Impulse!) Charlie Haden (1937-2014) combined the solid tonal qualities of his bass playing with an audacious sense of harmonic adventure. Those qualities were ideal for the departures of Ornette Coleman’s quintet in the late 1950s. After his time with Coleman, Haden continued to employ the contrasting aspects of his musicianship throughout his life up to, including and beyond his remarkable Quartet West recordings. After hearing, by chance, the 23-year-old pianist ...
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