Largo

Mehldau, Brad

album cover

A Jazz Thinker Discovers Orchestral Textures

Jazz hit the skids in the late '90s. The establishment, represented by Jazz at Lincoln Center artistic director Wynton Marsalis and his many disciples, cranked out scholarly but inconsequential rehashes of music made decades before. Rejecting this mind-set, a bunch of younger players attempted to overthrow orthodoxy by, among other things, covering songs by such rock bands as Black Sabbath and Radiohead. The most musical of these new thinkers: the pianist Brad Mehldau.

An intense young man who read German philosophy and early in his career struggled with heroin addiction, Mehldau and his trio savored the lyrical, often rhapsodic side of pop. With Largo he continues an investigation of Nick Drake and the Beatles that he'd begun on earlier records, transforming the familiar themes into platforms for open-ended questioning. These journeys, along with Mehldau's doctrine-free original compositions, suggest jazz that feels profoundly contemporary, not a pale echo of 1957.

The material on Largo, which was produced by Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, etc.), is moody-to-maundering stuff, with subterranean melodies calling from the shadows. Brion augments the trio with odd combinations of horns, guitar synth, and choppy rhythm loops—fashioning a tasteful, sometimes ethereal collage that practically manufactures mystery. The setting shows off Mehldau's graceful way with a melody—a trait that's eluded many of his contemporaries, including the trio known as the Bad Plus. And it puts him in a zone that's closer in temperament to Chopin's Nocturnes than any jazz proving ground. Mehldau touches the piano delicately, sweetly, until he draws out elements of his "sound" that he would never have encountered doing ordinary jazz repertory work.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 2002, Warner Bros.
Key Tracks: "Paranoid Android," "Dear Prudence," "Wave/Mother Nature's Son."
Catalog Choice: Anything Goes; Live in Tokyo (solo piano)
Next Stop: E.S.T.: Seven Days of Falling
After That: Jon Brion and Various Artists: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Book Page: 493