Jazz Articles

Daily articles including interviews, profiles, live reviews, film reviews and more... all carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page.

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Album Review

Elan Mehler: The After Suite

Read "The After Suite" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 16, 2009

This achingly beautiful, elegant album is only the second from Brooklyn-based pianist and composer Elan Mehler, being the follow-up to his debut, Scheme For Thought (Brownswood, 2007), another quietly sensational disc. If it might have seemed rather too breathless to have hailed a debut as a masterpiece, the temptation cannot be resisted second time out. The After Suite is a masterpiece with a capital “M."

A dreamy, spacious, alternating current of poignancy and joy, Mehler's writing and playing ...

186

Album Review

Elan Mehler Quartet: Scheme For Thought

Read "Scheme For Thought" reviewed by Frederick Bernas

by Frederick Bernas
September 23, 2007

Scheme For Thought was released on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings in September 2007, accompanied by a series of gigs around London, England by pianist Elan Mehler and his quartet. This group has completely abandoned standard notions of jazz: the absence of a drummer and repeated use of arco playing on the double bass give an almost classical and very ambient feeling to this ten-track set.

There is a great deal of subtle harmonic interaction between Mehler and the sometimes ghostly ...