Jazz Articles about Brad Mehldau

About Brad Mehldau

Radio & Podcasts

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 ...

Live Review

Brad Mehldau Live at The Falcon

by Mike Jurkovic
September 7, 2023

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 ...

Book Review

Brad Mehldau: Formation: Building A Personal Canon, Part One

by Ian Patterson
June 14, 2023

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 ...

Liner Notes

Brad Mehldau: Your Mother Should Know

by Brad Mehldau
April 23, 2023

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 ...

Album Review

Redman / Mehldau / McBride / Blade: Long Gone

Read "Long Gone" reviewed by Scott Gudell

by Scott Gudell
February 15, 2023

The mid-1990s saw the first recorded and officially preserved union of four up-and-coming jazz newcomers--Joshua Redman (saxophone,) Christian McBride (bass,) Brad Mehldau (piano) and Brian Blade (drums.) All four were dedicated followers of classic jazz and came together, but soon scattered and began charting their own individual courses. There was a long delay before they reunited for a second quartet recording in 2020. By then, each and every one of them had earned the respect of their peers and risen ...

Album Review

Brad Mehldau: Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles

Read "Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
January 27, 2023

In the press release and liner notes, Brad Mehldau, a spiritual man who delves deeply into subjects that matter to him, talks a lot about the Fab Four's continued universality and to the strangeness of their originality and our assimilation of it. But he never really gets to the point as clearly, personally and succinctly as he does when he plays the music. Because at the end of the day, despite and including the dotted eighth notes, snipped rhythms, big ...

Radio & Podcasts

Brad Mehldau, Pat Martino and Vincent Orsolini

by Joe Dimino
June 5, 2022

Leading the Kansas City Jazz Group Everyday Strangers, we kick off the 754th Episode of Neon Jazz with keyboardist Vincent Orsolini. From there, we hear the artist who floored him while witnessing his first live show in Brad Mehldau. We move on into profiling jazz with an edge from the likes of Franky Freedom, Mark Owen, TriTone Asylum and the saxophonist Roxy Coss. All of this comes to a close with Scott Joplin commemorating trains. Dig the music, my friends. ...