Brad Mehldau - The Art Of The Trio, Vol. 4 - Back At The Vanguard
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Artist: Brad MehldauEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Live
CD Release Date: 1999-09-28
Music Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Product features:
- MEHLDAU BRAD ART OF THE TRIO 4: BACK AT THE VANGUARD
- All the Things That You Are
- Sehnsucht
- Nice Pass
- Solar
- London Blues
- I'll Be Seeing You
- Exit Music For A Film
Music reviews of The Art Of The Trio, Vol. 4 - Back At The Vanguard
Music Review: A different kind of soloist
Rating: 5 Stars
I want to sit Brad Mehldau down and ask him: what is your intention when you solo? Is this what you hear or are you trying deliberately to push boundaries? I suppose the answer would be "Yes". I just wonder how deliberate he is. I would imagine he is something like Monk who seemed to be very strategic in his song writing to take advantage of norms and upset them.
His soloing is an entirely different thing. He explores as much rhythm as he does melody. With most soloists, their jaunts come through the notes themselves. The sounds that they play are the main point whereas the rhythm is the vehicle to express them. With Mehldau, maybe like Coltrane, he'll play certain phrasing repetitively-the same 3 notes over and over again with a change here or there but the overall theme staying the same. But unlike Coltrane, he won't play them over and over to explore the melody of it, he plays them to explore the rhythmical meaning of it. For example, he will play a phrase on beat 1 that ends nicely on beat 4, but then he'll play the same phrase starting on beat 2 where it will end awkwardly on beat 1 of the next measure, here he might play it again in triplet form so that it ends awkwardly again even later and then somehow he will tie it together and give you relief measures later where he will begin his journey again. He plays with your expectations. He seems to be trying to explore accents on different beats. Everything heretofore had always accentuated the downbeats, 2 and 4. But Mehldau, being unsatisfied with that, explores accentuating 3 and 4, or 1 and 3 or just beat 2 such that when you tap your foot you find yourself wanting to tap sooner to anticipate the usual accented down beat. This is readily apparent in track 2. I have never found a slow 4/4 so complex.
Another comment must be made also on the endings of his songs. And I suppose the beginnings too where he mostly starts out solo piano. But the ending of track 1 is where Mehldau displays his true genius. His solos during the song are concerned with pushing limits. He is playing melody after melody, riff after riff, upsetting boundary lines, blurring accents, speeding up then slowing down, delaying a beat and then landing on one, it is intense sometimes confusing listening. It is also mindblowing. But his song endings is where he lets go of all that. He stretches out and starts playing melody again for melody sake. He seems to let his emotional side take over and he begins to drive deeper and deeper. The drum solo at the end of track 1 is probably the best one I've ever heard. And Mehldau's accompaniment is so poignant, accenting beat 1 by playing 3 notes just before it creating an amazing sense of tension. The drummer seems to careen measure after measure into beat 1. Mehldau's ending solo continues the driving theme by playing just 1 note repeatedly, building into an intense groove. He is not pushing rhythmical boundaries here, he is just playing music. He uses his rhythmic virtuosity of course here and there to accentuate the theme. It is truly a delight to hear Mehldau's creativity in a way that is just there to be simple and understood. It is some beautiful work.
Description of The Art Of The Trio, Vol. 4 - Back At The Vanguard
MEHLDAU BRAD ART OF THE TRIO 4: BACK AT THE VANGUARDBrad Mehldau is surely one of the most hailed pianists jazz has seen in the 1990s. But his string of trio recordings presents a long, studied meditation on the piano trio. He plays with hair-raising energy, cascading over the keys and still finding endless space to slow down and count off each chord as if it were a lone haiku. --Andrew Bartlett
Simply put, Brad Mehldau can flat-out play. Beyond his phenomenal skills is an uncanny ability to wring new sentiment out of old tunes ("I'll Be Seeing You") while also recontextualizing interesting contemporary pop as jazz composition (Radiohead's "Exit Music for a Film). On this, his fourth Art of the Trio recording, Mehldau again finds himself in the friendly confines of the Village Vanguard for an evening of his mood-swept melodies and tangled bop knots. Starting with an uptempo "All the Things You Are," the pianist concentrates on blistering right-hand solo work, taking only the slightest detours to wonder over the delicate soul of the tune. But this diversion is so subtle, so whispered that it threatens to go unnoticed if Mehldau were not meticulous with every melody he presses into the keys. Mehldau is often thought of as an "impressionistic" player, and on volume 4 he gives every song both the time and the permission to explore, change, and mutate. One minute, Mehldau is roaring up and down the keys on "Sehnsucht," the next he's turning the tune into a Brahms-like suite. With skills like that, we can only hope there's no end to Mehldau's Art of the Trio series. --S. Duda
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