Blues and Ballads Brad Mehldau Trio

• 1Since I Fell for You10:56
• 2I Concentrate On You07:24
• 3Little Person03:55
• 4Cheryl07:43
• 5These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)06:03
• 6And I Love Her09:30
• 7My Valentine10:12
• Total Runtime55:43

Info for Blues and Ballads

Das Brad Mehldau Trio meldet sich mit Blues and Ballads, der ersten Studioeinspielung des Trios seit dem 2012 veröffentlichten Album Where Do You Start, zurück. Der Vorgänger in der Alben-Chronologie des Trios wurde mit Kritikerlob geradezu überschüttet. „Mehldau lässt den erzählerischen Fluss seiner wunderbar gespielten Geschichten nie von seiner einzigartigen Technik und seinem akkuraten Timing überschatten. Mit dieser wunderbaren Herangehensweise graben der Pianist und sein Trio tief im Linksaußen-Pop und dem American Songbook. Den Modern Jazz lassen sie abenteuerlich anders und neu schimmern“, schrieb die Financial Times. Blues and Ballads folgt dieser Fährte einmal mehr mit außergewöhnlichen Interpretationen von Fremdkompositionen. Diesmal haben Mehldau und sein Trio, zu dem Bassist Larry Grenadier und Drummer Jeff Ballard zählen, den Fokus allerdings auf den Blues und Balladen gelegt, wie der Albumtitel vorgibt.

Auf Blues and Ballads geht Mehldau konsequent seinen Weg als Geschichtenerzähler und bindet Songs in eine nonchalante Dramaturgie. Er klingt im Verbund mit seinen beiden Trio-Kollegen geerdet, wie immer ein wenig neu und spielt dabei dennoch auf gewohnt hohem Niveau. Das große narrative Vermögen des Tastenmannes, dem Die Zeit kürzlich „Feierstunden des Klaviers“ attestierte, fasst den Jazz-Begriff dabei weit. Mehldau ist einer der wenigen ausgewiesenen Jazzer, deren Musik mit beinahe greifbaren emotionalen Intensitäten Menschen für den Jazz öffnen, die mit Jazz eigentlich nichts am Hut haben. Beliebig oder gar geschmäcklerisch ist Blues and Ballads dabei keineswegs. Unterhaltung offenbart bei Mehldau immer auch Haltung – im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes.

Jon Brions Ballade Little Person schwingt langsam und lädt zum Verweilen im Sentiment ein, während Charlie Parkers Cheryl das dialogische Vermögen des Trios beleuchtet. Buddy Johnsons Since I Fell For You durchläuft in Mehldaus spannender Auffassung eine Vielzahl von Stimmungen. Das Grundthema von Paul McCartneys My Valentine bricht in der Lesung des Mehldau Trios auf wunderbar überraschende Weise immer wieder neu auf und kreiert damit Motive voller Schönheit. Ein elegantes Arrangement von Lennon & McCartneys And I Love Her schafft Raum für den brillanten Artikulationsreichtum der drei Solisten.

In den 90er-Jahren wurde der Wahl-New Yorker Brad Mehldau als Mitglied des Quartetts von Joshua Redman erstmals einem breiteren Publikum bekannt, bevor er seine eigene Band gründete. Sein Trio, mit dem er mehrfach um die Welt tourte, spielte bislang 13 Alben ein. Nicht minder produktiv gestaltete Mehldau sein Werk als Solist, Quartett-Leader und Kollaborateur. Mit der gefeierten Sopranisten Renée Fleming spielte er das Album Love Sublime ein. An der Seite von Pat Metheny nahm er das Duo-Album Metheny Mehldau auf und bat für Quartet seine beiden Trio-Musiker Ballard und Grenadier zur gemeinsamen Studio-Session mit dem Gitarristen. Für seine beiden Alben Ode und Mehliana:Taming The Dragon, für das er sich mit Mark Guiliana zusammen tat, wurde er jeweils mit einem Grammy nominiert. Im November 2015 veröffentlichte er die 4-CD-Box 10 Years Solo Live und erhielt im gleichen Jahr als erster Jazz-Musiker überhaupt die Medaille der Wigmore Hall für sein bisheriges Schaffen. Das Brad Mehldau Trio wurde im Rahmen der ECHO-Verleihung 2013 zum Besten Internationalen Ensemble gekürt. Im gleichen Jahr erhielt die Mehldau Trio-Einspielung Where Do You Start die Auszeichnung als Album des Jahres der französischen Académie du Jazz.

Brad Mehldau, Klavier
Larry Grenadier, Bass
Jeff Ballard, Schlagzeug

Brad Mehldau
Jazz 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 (recently re-packaged and re-released as a 5-Disc box set by Nonesuch in late 2011). During that same period, Mehldau also released a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that included both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle and Places might be called “concept” albums made up exclusively of original material with 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 September 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—on September 27, 2005. An exciting double live trio recording entitled Brad Mehldau Trio Live was released on March 25th, 2008 (Nonesuch) to critical acclaim. On March 16, 2010 Nonesuch released a double-disc of original work entitled Highway Rider, the highly anticipated follow up to Largo. The album was Mehldau’s second collaboration with renowned producer Jon Brion and featured performances by Mehldau’s trio—drummer Jeff Ballard and bassist Larry Grenadier—as well as percussionist Matt Chamberlain, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and a chamber orchestra led by Dan Coleman. In 2011 Nonesuch released Live in Marciac – a two CD release with a companion DVD of the 2006 performance, and Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli. In 2012 Nonesuch released an album of original songs from the Brad Mehldau Trio – Ode - the first from the trio since 2008’s live Village Vanguard disc and the first studio trio recording since 2005’s Day is Done. Ode went on to garner a Grammy-Nomination. Nonesuch released the Brad Mehldau Trio’s Where Do You Start, a companion disc to the critically acclaimed Ode, in the fall of 2012. Whereas Ode featured 11 songs composed by Mehldau, Where Do You Start comprises the Trio’s interpretations of 10 tunes by other composers, along with one Mehldau original. In 2013 Mehldau produced and performed on Walking Shadows, the acclaimed Nonesuch release from Joshua Redman. 2013 also saw a number of collaborative tours including a duo tour with mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile, piano duets with Kevin Hays and a new electric project with prodigious drummer Mark Guiliana entitled “Mehliana.” Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, the debut release by Mehliana, was released to critical acclaim in early 2014.

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, recordings and concerts with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden and Lee Konitz, and recording as a sideman with the likes of Michael Brecker, Wayne Shorter, John Scofield, and Charles Lloyd. For more than a decade, he has collaborated with several musicians and peers whom he respects greatly, including the guitarists Peter Bernstein and Kurt Rosenwinkel and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner. Mehldau also has played on a number of recordings outside of the jazz idiom, like Willie Nelson’s Teatro and singer-songwriter Joe Henry’s Scar. His music has appeared in several movies, including Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Wim Wender’s Million Dollar Hotel. He also composed an original soundtrack for the French film, Ma Femme Est Une Actrice. Mehldau composed two new works commissioned by Carnegie Hall for voice and piano, The Blue Estuaries and The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, which were performed in the spring of 2005 with the acclaimed classical soprano, Renee Fleming. These songs were recorded with Fleming and released in 2006 on the Love Sublime record; simultaneously, Nonesuch released an album of Mehldau’s jazz compositions for trio entitled House on Hill. A 2008 Carnegie Hall commission for a cycle of seven love songs for Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter premiered in 2010. Love Songs, a double album that paired the newly commissioned song cycle, with a selection of French, American, English, and Swedish songs that Mehldau and von Otter performed together, was released in late 2010 (on the Naïve label) to unanimous praise. In 2013 Mehldau premiered and performed Variations on a Melancholy Theme a large format orchestral piece which was performed with both Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia.

Mehldau was appointed as curator of an annual four-concert jazz series at London's prestigious Wigmore Hall during its 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, with Mehldau appearing in at least two of the four annual concerts. In late January 2010 Carnegie Hall announced the 2010-11 season-long residency by Mehldau as holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall—the first jazz artist to hold this position since it was established in 1995. Previous holders include Louis Andriessen (2009–2010), Elliott Carter (2008–2009), and John Adams (2003–2007).

Booklet for Blues and Ballads