Grammy Award winning jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s, most often in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records entitled The Art of the Trio. Mehldau also released a solo piano recording entitled “Elegiac Cycle” and a record called “Places” that included both solo piano and trio songs.
The Brad Mehldau Trio released “Day is Done” in 2005, an exciting double live trio recording entitled “Brad Mehldau Trio Live” in 2008, and a double-disc of original work entitled “Highway Rider” in 2010. 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.
Ode, a 2012 album of original songs from the Brad Mehldau Trio, garnered a Grammy nomination. In addition to a series of projects during this time, Mehldau’s monumental and ambitious 10 Years Solo Live eight-LP vinyl box set was released to unanimous critical acclaim in the fall of 2015. In 2016, Brad Mehldau Trio’s Blues and Ballads became the ensemble’s first new release since 2012’s Where Do You Start and the celebrated debut album of the Joshua Redman/Brad Mehldau Duo. Both albums earned a Grammy nomination for Mehldau. After several years of performing live, labelmates mandolinist/singer Chris Thile and Mehldau released their debut: Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau.
2019 saw the release of the Grammy Award winning conceptual recording Finding Gabriel — an album of harmonically rich vocal layers paired with strings, synthesizers, rock drums, and improvisation — featuring a number of high profile guests including Ambrose Akinmusire, Kurt Elling, Becca Stevens, Gabriel Kahane, and Mark Guiliana among others. The release won Mehldau his first Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album.
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. 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.