Brad Mehldau – Après Fauré (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:52 minutes | 719 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
On the album, Mehldau performs four Nocturnes, from a thirty-seven-year span of Gabriel Fauré’s career, as well as a reduction of an excerpt from the Adagio movement of his Piano Quartet in G Minor. Here Mehldau’s four compositions that Fauré inspired are presented in a group, bookended by two sections featuring the French composer’s works.
Read moreBrad Mehldau – After Bach II (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:13 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
The album comprises four preludes and one fugue from the ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’, as well as the Allemande from the fourth Partita, interspersed with seven compositions or improvisations by Mehldau inspired by the complementary works of Bach – including Mehldau’s Variations on Bach’s ‘Goldberg Theme’.
Read moreBrad Mehldau – Between Bach / Fugue No. 20 in A Minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, BWV 865 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 10:01 minutes | 199 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
Brad Mehldau presents Fugue No. 20 in A Minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, BWV 865, ahead of his new Bach album, After Bach II.
Read moreChris Potter feat. Brad Mehldau, John Patitucci & Brian Blade – Eagle’s Point (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:42 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Edition Records
Chris Potter announces the upcoming release of his new album, ‘Eagle’s Point’. Featuring a modern day supergroup of supergroups including Brad Mehldau, John Patitucci and Brian Blade, the new record will be released on Edition Records in Spring 2024. It promises to be an electrifying testament to modern jazz, uniting four unparalleled luminaries within the genre, performing eight original compositions written by Chris especially for the recording session. The planets finally aligned; despite never having the time to perform together, this supergroup seized the opportunity in late 2022 and assembled to record this landmark album. Each musician, a dominant force in their own right, contributes to every track with humility and mutual respect. The musicianship is nothing short of exceptional, with everyone bringing something different to the table; Brad Mehldau’s virtuosic performances on the piano dance and have an unmatched eloquence, John Patitucci’s bass lines weave intricate tapestries, and Brian Blade’s percussive finesse lays the rhythmic foundation for this dream team. Chris’ new compositions showcase his exceptional skill as a writer, crafting melodies which augment and reflect the talents of those in the group. In this setting, Potter’s musical narratives flourish, marked by moments of virtuosic interplay, infectious grooves, and those quintessential Potter-esque melodies. Each track reverberates with their collective genius, a confluence of unparalleled talent, virtuosic brilliance, and artistic expression of the highest calibre.
Read moreTimo Andres, Jeremy Denk, Brad Mehldau, Randy Newman – I Still Play (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 39:18 minutes | 444 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
The existence of I Still Play as an album is a bit of a paradox. Each of these 11 tributes to [former Nonesuch president] Bob Hurwitz was written for an audience of one, on a particular Steinway in a specific Upper West Side living room. And yet here they are, making their way into the wider world. None are loftily ambitious or daringly experimental compositions. Rather, each distills an aspect of its author’s voice to a concentrated miniature. The prevailing tone is conversational rather than declamatory, though it’s a wide-ranging conversation. Large questions are posed but rarely answered in full. If the listener has the odd feeling of having stumbled into an exchange between two friends and missing an inside joke or shared reference here and there—that’s not far from the truth.
Read moreBrad Mehldau – Largo (2023 Remaster) (2002/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:29 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
In the most enigmatic project up to this point in his career, Brad Mehldau explores conflicting aesthetics, sometimes in tracks positioned next to each other, and occasionally within the confines of a single performance. A spare simplicity governs much of the album, emphasized by almost puritanical horn arrangements — long notes, mournful triadic chords. After acknowledging these episodes with childlike figurations on the piano, Mehldau then builds his solos along more dissonant lines, which invariably end up enhancing the mood. But then there are tracks like “Dropjes,” whose electronic effects gnash angrily at the piano, or “Free Willy,” on which putty attached to the instrument’s low strings allows Mehldau to unleash a feral improvisation, with lines that suggest scurrying rodents more than bebop blowing. Producer Jon Brion stimulated much of this adventurism, at times diving directly into the mix with his guitar synth or Chamberlin keyboard. But what intrigues most about Largo in the end is the perspective it offers on Mehldau, whose playing here is, as always, intelligent, perhaps a bit cerebral, and now open as well to sonic exotica. – Robert L. Doerschuk
Read moreIan Bostridge, Brad Mehldau – Mehldau: The Folly of Desire (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:07:54 minutes | 2,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Brad Mehldau presents The Folly of Desire, a song cycle inquiring the limits of sexual freedom in a post-#MeToo political age, together with tenor Ian Bostridge, one of the greatest song interpreters of our times. Setting poetry by Blake, Yeats, Shakespeare, Brecht, Goethe, Auden and Cummings, Mehldau’s music shifts seamlessly between a jazz idiom and Classical art song, and the work explores a theme as timeless as it is topical. The stylistic diversity of this project is underlined by adding a selection of jazz standards, as well as a Schubert lied.
Read moreJoshua Redman, Brad Mehldau – Nearness (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:43 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records releases saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau’s Nearness, the longtime friends’ and collaborators’ first duo album, on September 9, 2016. Nearness, a selection of duets recorded live during their recent European tour, is available for pre-order now at iTunes and in the Nonesuch Store, where an instant download of the album track “Ornithology” is included with purchase. You can hear the track and find out where the duo will be performing together this fall below; for all the latest tour details, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Brad Mehldau first came to prominence as a member Joshua Redman’s quartet in the 1990s before becoming a bandleader himself. The pair first reunited in 2010 when Redman was featured on Mehldau’s album Highway Rider. In 2013, Mehldau was featured as a performer and producer on Redman’s Walking Shadows.
“It’s like one of those friendships where you don’t see someone for a long stretch and then you fall right back where you left off,” Mehldau told the Ottawa Citizen when he and Redman performed at the city’s jazz festival in 2011. According to the Citizen’s Peter Hum, these two friends are “among the most potent and influential jazz instrumentalists of their generation, and what Mehldau calls ‘picking up’ is in fact world-class improvising before rapt audiences.”
Each artist has recorded extensively for Nonesuch, with a wide variety of collaborators. Brad Mehldau’s label debut was the 2004 solo disc Live in Tokyo and includes six records with his trio: House on Hill, Day Is Done, Brad Mehldau Trio Live, Ode, Where Do You Start, and Blues and Ballads. His collaborative records on the label include Love Sublime, Highway Rider, Metheny Mehldau, Metheny Mehldau Quartet, Modern Music, and Mehliana: Taming the Dragon. Mehldau’s additional solo albums on Nonesuch include Live in Marciac and last year’s 8-LP/4-CD 10 Years Solo Live, which the New York Times says “contains some of the most impressive pianism he has captured on record.”
Joshua Redman’s first album on Nonesuch was the Grammy-nominated Momentum, released in 2005. His other releases on the label include Back East, Compass, and Trios Live, all of which explore the trio format; MoodSwing, originally released in 1994 with Redman’s own band, including Mehldau, and re-released by Nonesuch in 2009; Walking Shadows, his first recording to include an orchestral ensemble, from 2013; and The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, his 2015 collaboration with the acclaimed trio, which the New York Times called “a knockout” and NPR called “a roaring and beautiful summit meeting.” In 2004, he was a founder of the SFJAZZ Collective, an eight-piece, multi-generational ensemble of accomplished musicians. Since 2009, Redman has been performing with a new collaborative group called James Farm, whose members also include pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland. The group has two releases on Nonesuch; their self-titled album from 2011, and City Folk, released in 2014.
(more…)
Brad Mehldau – Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 48:30 minutes | 482 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
The live solo album features the pianist and composer’s interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s solo and trio shows, he had not previously recorded any of the tunes on ‘Your Mother Should Know’. The album ends with a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed. The album was recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris.
(more…)
Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau – Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:30 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records labelmates mandolinist/singer Chris Thile and pianist Brad Mehldau, longtime admirers of each other’s work, first toured as a duo in 2013. At the end of 2015, they played a two-night stand at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom before going into the studio to record Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau, a mix of covers and original songs that Nonesuch releases on January 27, 2017, on two CDs / LPs. The vinyl edition includes a bonus performance of Fiona Apple’s “Fast As You Can.” You can watch a live performances of the former above and the latter below.
Read moreCharlie Haden & Brad Mehldau – Long Ago And Far Away (Live) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:52 minutes | 615 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Impulse!
A really great meeting of jazz giants – both very familiar names, with very familiar styles – but somehow also quite fresh and surprising in this setting! Haden’s the especially strong charmer – because with just the piano of Brad Mehldau alongside him, there’s lots of room to hear his more subtle touches on the bass – especially as the album features all long tracks, most past the 10 minute mark – which really lets both players open up! Mehldau is pretty great, too – past his successful sound, with some surprisingly modern touches as he makes his way over extended performances of “Au Privave”, “My Old Flame”, “Long Ago & Far Away”, “My Love & I”, and “What’ll I Do”
Read more