Piano Jazz Sessions: Brad Meldhau
© David Bazemore
- Date
- 18 March 2022 – 8:30pm
- Place
- Auditorium
Piano Jazz Session
Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has performed with his trio and as a recitalist since the early 1990s. His musical personality forms a dichotomy between, on the one hand, the improviser who knows how to create surprise and wonder, and on the other an artist who is fascinated by how music is formally constructed. His ordered musical reflection can then be channelled into creative expression. These two aspects of Brad Mehldau’s personality merge and collide, causing an effect akin to organised chaos. The evening of 18 March at the auditorium of the Fondation Louis Vuitton promises to be memorable.
The artist
Brad Mehldau
As well as his work as part of a trio and as a soloist, Brad Mehldau also collaborates with many jazz musicians including Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, Michael Brecker, Wayne Shorter, John Scofield and Charles Lloyd. For more than ten years, he has made music with personalities he has always admired: guitarists Peter Bernstein and Kurt Rosenwinkel, saxophonist Mark Turner and others.
Outside the world of jazz, Brad Mehldau has contributed to various recordings (Teatro by Willie Nelson, Scar by singer and songwriter Joe Henry). His music can also be heard on the big screen (Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick, The Million Dollar Hotel by Wim Wender). And he composed the soundtrack for the French film Ma femme est une actrice (Yvan Attal, 2001). Carnegie Hall in New York has also commissioned him to produce several works for piano and voice: The Blue Estuaries, The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God; recorded with soprano Renée Fleming, which are featured on the 2006 album Love Sublime. During that same year Nonesuch produced House On Hill, an album of his jazz compositions for trio. In 2008, Carnegie Hall asked him to compose a cycle of seven love songs for the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, which was premiered in 2010. Love Songs (Naïve, 2010) is a double album dedicated to this cycle, and also includes a selection of French, American, English and Swedish songs. The album has been widely acclaimed by music critics. In 2013, Brad Mehldau created Variations on a Melancholy Theme, an orchestral piece that he performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Britten Sinfonia.
During the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons Brad Mehldau was named Artist in Residence at Wigmore Hall in London, where he organised a series of jazz concert cycles. He holds the Richard and Barbara Deb’s Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall; the first jazz artist to hold the post since it was created in 1995. Previous chairs include Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter and John Adams.
