Jazz Articles about Larry Grenadier

Brad Mehldau Trio: Ode

by John Kelman
March 21, 2012

The Art of the Trio: Recordings 1996-2001 (Nonesuch, 2011) provided an opportunity to reassess Brad Mehldau's rapid trajectory, though the trio that established him as one of the past two decades' most important pianists was long gone. If Jorge Rossy's replacement in 2005 seemed to open the trio up more, it's perhaps because drummer Jeff Ballard is a more assertive conversationalist, as demonstrated from the get-go on “Knives Out," the first track on Mehldau's debut with this updated incarnation, Day ...

Brad Mehldau: The Art of the Trio - Recordings 1996-2001

by John Kelman
November 28, 2011

Brad Mehldau Trio The Art of the Trio: Recordings 1996-2001 Nonesuch Records 2011 It's hard to believe that it's only been fifteen years since Brad Mehldau emerged on the scene, so prevalent and influential has the pianist become since then. At the same time as he was gaining some significant attention for his work with saxophonist Joshua Redman on Moodswing (Warner Bros., 1994), the then 24 year-old pianist had been recruited by Redman's label, ...

Brad Mehldau: Highway Rider

by Karl Ackermann
May 12, 2010

As a classically trained teen, Brad Mehldau was introduced to the music of Keith Jarrett setting him on the road to jazz. He did not abandon the classical genre and those influences were powerfully present in his first solo release Elegiac Cycle (1999). He has since written pieces for the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France and Carnegie Hall commissions for Anne Sofie von Otter and Renée Fleming respectively. Highway Rider is a two disc showcase of Mehldau's growth as both a composer ...

Highway Rider

by John Kelman
March 9, 2010

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 ...

Joshua Redman: Compass

by Jeff Stockton
October 6, 2009

No jazz musician with Joshua Redman's pedigree, chops and talent wants to be tagged as “cautious" or “cerebral," but that was Redman's reputation, perhaps right up until Back East was released in 2007. That CD, a return to straight-ahead acoustic playing after a brief digression, found the saxophonist fronting a few different rhythm sections (and standing next to a couple of guests) and generated natural comparisons to Sonny Rollins' classic Way Out West. Compass simultaneously extends the ...

Joshua Redman: Compass

by Doug Collette
March 2, 2009

Joshua Redman has made some fine albums in the past, including Timeless Tales (For Changing Times) (Warner Bros., 1998), Passage of Time (Warner Bros., 2001) and Spirit of the Moment Live (Warner Bros., 1995), but he's never recorded one with such clarity of purpose as the self-produced Compass. In keeping with the dual meaning of the title word (alternately a verb to accomplish as well as the noun as a tool of direction) the saxophonist leads two different trios into ...

Joshua Redman: Compass

by Chris May
January 5, 2009

Like its predecessor Back East (Nonesuch, 2007), saxophonist Joshua Redman's Compass invites comparisons with Sonny Rollins' totemic acoustic trio outing Way Out West (Riverside, 1957), whose instrumentation it reflects and whose influence Redman has acknowledged.

Another Rollins album which springs to mind, though more for its title than its structure, is Saxophone Colossus (Riverside, 1956); for with Compass, Redman, like Rollins 53 years earlier, has produced the most singular album of his career so far. Redman's previous acoustic ...