Brad Mehldau
(Website)Brad Mehldau, like many of his contemporaries, began his career with heavy classical training. He started experimenting with the piano when he was just four and began taking lessons when he was six, continuing until he was fourteen. As a youngster he listened more to rock than jazz. Brad moved to New York City in 1988 where he worked with a variety of musicians over the next several years and made several recordings as a sideman. During that period he began to develop his own style which he attributes to the influence of his musical peers, specifically bandleaders Peter Bernstein, Jessie Davis and David Sanchez as well as other musicians he worked with often -Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Perico Sambeat, Leon Parker, Avishai Cohen and Chris Potter, to name a few. In addition he met and played with his future trio mates, Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy in several projects. Brad’s first major international exposure came as a member of the Joshua Redman Quartet, with which he recorded MoodSwing and toured the US and Europe for a year and a half.
In 1995 Brad released his debut album as a leader for Warner Bros. Records, appropriately titled, Introducing Brad Mehldau.
Brad’s second Warner album, The Art Of The Trio, Vol. 1, was released in February 1997 to almost instant critical acclaim.
With the release in early 1998 of his third Warner Bros. album (as a leader), “Art of the Trio, Volume 2: Live at the Village Vanguard”, Brad Mehldau spent most of the year touring extensively throughout the US and Europe with his trio of Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy, while finding time to record with Willie Nelson and record and tour briefly once again with Joshua Redman.
His next trio installment, released in September of ‘98 his new record, “Songs: The Art of the Trio, Vol. 3”.
“Elegiac Cycle”, Brad’s exploration of solo piano released in the spring of ‘99. The atmospheric and classically-infused jazz of “Elegiac Cycle” comprises nine beautifully mysterious and emotionally complex Mehldau-composed pieces.
In “Art of the Trio 4: Back at the Vanguard”, Brad revisits the trio configuration with his cohorts Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy. The album includes three Mehldau originals, “Nice Pass”, “London Blues” and a live version of “Sehnsucht” previously recorded in-studio on “Songs: The Art of the Trio, Vol.3”. Another reprise from “Songs”, the both brooding and lively “Exit Music (For A Film)” by Radiohead, is even more intensely enjoyable than it was the first time around. Three delightfully disquieting classics complete the albums seven compositions: “All The Things You Are” (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II), “I’ll Be Seeing You” (Irving Kahal/Sammy Fain), and Miles Davis’ “Solar”.
Brad’s latest cd, “Places”, is comprised of all original compositions by Brad, performed either solo or with his regular trio (Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy). The songs are all named for the cities in which they were written.
Brad has had extensive exposure in films including his performance of the lead track from “The Art Of The Trio, Vol.1”, “Blame It On My Youth” (Oscar Levant/Edward Heyman), featured in the film Eyes Wide Shut and its companion soundtrack on Warner Sunset; “Dream” in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”; and “Old Man” and “Still Crazy After All These Years” in Space Cowboys. He has also improvised a solo piano score for the French film “Un Ange en Danger”, and is the subject of a just-released French documentary entitled Jazz Collection: Brad Mehldau.
Albums
Progression - Art of the Trio Vol.5
This fifth trio live album of the Brad Mehldau Trio with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jorge Rossy on drums, lead by american pianist Brad Mehldau is not just a progression, as its title indicates – at least one eminent French jazz critic called it “liberation”. The cohesion of the musicians is beyond words, their approach to the standards and Brad’s compositions totally free. Rather than trying to describe music that cannot be described with words, there is only one piece of advice to give: Get this double album to find out why this trio has the stature that it has in France, and why this pianist cannot be compared to any other.
Brad Mehldau has just completed the film to a French movie comedy, “My Wife is an Actress” directed by talented and successful director and actor Yvan Attal. 2001 will rest a crucial year in Brad Mehldau’s life and carreer.
Largo
Label: CD Warner Bros. Records
Distribution in France: Warner Jazz France
Release date: August 27, 2002
Rock rhythms, caresses of strings, electronics and romanticism, the pianist widens his musical universe and invents the jazz of future. Pieces of Beatles, Radiohead and Jobim, Brahms’s reflections, sound intensity, guaranteed emotion. This new album has entered the french general charts immediately after its release
Day is Done
Label: Nonesuch
Distribution in France: Warner Music
Release date: September 27, 2005
The new album by the Brad Mehldau Trio is on release on September 27, 2005, the first for his new label Nonesuch. In his wide-ranging choice of songs, Mehldau continues his Anglophile bent, with interpretations of songs by English singer/songwriter Nick Drake, two tunes from Lennon and McCartney, and one from the British band Radiohead. There also are two new Mehldau originals, “Artis” and “Turtle Town”. “Granada”, an evocative song from one of Mehldau’s favorite colleagues, the tenor saxophonist Chris Cheek, is included as well. Day is Done also includes one solo piano track: Mehldau’s take on the quirky Beatles gem, “Martha My Dear”. Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” is reworked, and the one ballad on the album is a paired down, simply rendered version of Burt Bacharach’s “Alfie”. The record ends with “No Moon at All”, a swinging number that was a favorite of Nat King Cole. Day is Done marks the debut of new trio member Jeff Ballard on drums, joining Mehldau on piano and Larry Grenadier on bass.
House on Hill
Label: Nonesuch
Distribution in France: Warner France
Release date: June 26, 2006
From 1994-2004, the Brad Mehldau Trio was composed of Larry Grenadier on bass, Jorge Rossy on drums, and Mehldau on piano. Jeff Ballard recently replaced Rossy, and House on Hill is the final recording from the previous group. Seven of its tracks come from a two-day session in 2002, when the trio recorded eighteen songs in total. That material was divided into Mehldau originals and interpretations of existing songs; the latter group became Anything Goes, released in 2004. The originals are presented here with two additional songs-”August Ending” and “Fear and Trembling”-from a more recent recording session. “All of the songs were written between 2000 and 2002, and they form a time capsule of my writing then, and of the way the trio was playing together,” Mehldau says, “I am so glad that this music is finally able to see the light of day.”
Metheny Mehldau
Label: Nonesuch/WEA
Distribution in France: Warner Music France
Release date: September 12, 2006
Metheny Mehldau is the first collaboration between guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Brad Mehldau. The record features seven tracks written by Metheny and three by Mehldau, performed by the duo. Mehldau’s bandmates drummer Jeff Ballard and bassist Larry Grenadier join them for two songs.
“I have followed Brad’s career closely as he has emerged as the major young jazz musicians of his generation,” Metheny says. “Brad has evolved a playing style that encompasses a universe of his own design, where he is somehow able to reconcile the larger jazz tradition with a playing language that is informed by the major aspects of the piano’s evolution within the world of western classical music while making up-to-date reports on the current state of the world all at the same time.
Mehldau comments : “When you do a collaborative project with someone, one thing that you hope is that neither of you will have to adjust too radically-to the point of erasing part of your personal style-to make the other person comfortable. In this situation with Pat, it was the opposite-really a first for me: I felt that by strongly being ourselves and asserting our own identities unapologetically, we strengthened the overall statement and supported each other all the more. Pat is one of the musicians who made me want to play jazz from an early age. I’ve had a myriad of influences over the years. Pat was there early on and has always remained. I always go back to his records, for the sheer joy I get from listening to them.”
Quartet
Label: Nonesuch/WEA
Distribution in France: Warner Music France
Release date: March 05, 2007
Quartet expands upon the musical begun by guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Brad Mehldau on their 2006 Nonesuch collaboration, Metheny/Mehldau. This time they incorporate the members of Mehldau’s trio, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, into a breathtakingly eclectic set, which ranges from the airy, pastoral “So Much Music Everywhere” to straight-up rocking in the slowly building “Towards the Light.”
The 11 tracks that comprise Quartet were cut during the week-length December 2005 session at Manhattan’s Right Track that yielded Metheny /Mehldau. On Quartet, each artist contributes original solo compositions as well as their first co-written piece, “A Night Away.” The group also reworks Mehldau’s “Fear and Trembling,” which originally appeared on House On Hill, Mehldau’s final outing with his previous trio lineup. It also interprets Metheny’s “Marta’s Theme,” from his score to the 1998 Italian film, A Passage to Paradise. Quartet is perhaps even more adventurous and just as rewarding as their first release; the exhilarating back and forth between Metheny and Mehldau continues with their eagerly awaited live dates scheduled for the summer in Europe.
Brad Mehldau Trio Live
Label: Nonesuch
Distribution in France: Warner
Release date: March 24, 2008
The twelve titles of this double album, produced by Brad Mehldau, were all recorded at the Village Vanguard within a period of four days, from October 11 to 15, 2006.
The New York Time comments on the first evening: “A wonder of concentration and restraint…
Playing the Mehldau composition “Ruby’s Rub”, the trio generates an effervescent intensity that resembles the rhythm section of Miles Davis in the mid sixties, with Herbie Hancock at the piano and Tony Williams on drums”
Every Mehldau solo leaves the necessary space between melodic sequences and improvisation. Every opening is an opportunity foro the brilliant Jeff Ballard to demonstrate his rigor and his mastery of the drums.
In his composition entitled “Buddha Realm”, an anagram of Brad Mehldau’s name, Larry Grenadier anchors his resnece by a single and unique note, maintained in ostinato, to prepare the arrival of Mehldau, who offers us an ambidextrous solo of rare sensitivity.
According to Pop Matters, this is “the most aggressive and dynamic of all of Mehldau’s live albums”.
On Tour
- December 06, 2008: Paris - Cité de la Musique
- December 07, 2008: Paris - Cité de la Musique