Darek Oleszkiewicz, a native of Poland and member of the music faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, makes his recording debut as a leader with this remarkable CD. Not yet thirty-years-old at the time of these sessions, the bassist shows surprising depth as a composer, arranger and soloist, with a gift for lyricism and a virtuoso technique reminiscent of Niels Pedersen. The first five songs are sterling duets with pianist Brad Mehldau (with whom he has worked in the past). The only standard, "You Don't Know What Love Is," evolves from a conversational duo improvisation, with both men avoiding typical approaches. His shimmering "Like a Dream" ought to have lyrics, while his "Blues for Eden" is very playful with hints of "Kerry Dance" worked into it. On two tracks, Oleszkiewicz leads a quartet with saxophonist Chuck Manning, guitarist Larry Koonse and drummer Mark Ferber. "Precious Moments" is an intricate composition that gives a strong indication of the leader's classical background.

The members of the legendary original 1990s Joshua Redman Quartet—Joshua Redman (saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums)—reunited after twenty-six years after their 1994 debut album, MoodSwing, for 2020’s RoundAgain; they return now with LongGone, out now. The new album features original Redman compositions from the RoundAgain recording sessions, plus a live performance of the MoodSwing track “Rejoice,” captured by SFJAZZ at the San Francisco Jazz Festival.

The Bach 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.

On Après Fauré, Brad 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, along with four of Mehldau’s compositions that Fauré inspired presented in a group, bookended by two sections featuring the French composer’s works.

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. ‘Eagle’s Point’ 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.

Pianist Brad Mehldau has regularly performed with his trio, which has included bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard since 2004, when the latter replaced Jorge Rossy. As a trio, they've spent relatively little time in the studio together exclusively - it's been seven years since Day Is Done. On 2010's Highway Rider, Mehldau augmented the group with Matt Chamberlain, Joshua Redman, and an orchestra. Ode marks the very first album comprised of all Mehldau material cut by this trio. While the title may reflect a a certain ponderousness, these 11 tunes are anything but. Specifically written for this group, they show off an increasingly muscular sense of interplay and stylistic athleticism that wasn't nearly as present on Day Is Done. "M.B." (written in memory of Michael Brecker) states a bluesy theme and moves off into several directions, seemingly at once…

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.

Brad Mehldau’s Finding Gabriel includes nine thematically related songs by Mehldau and features performances by him on piano, synthesizers, percussion, and Fender Rhodes, as well as vocals. Guest musicians include Ambrose Akinmusire, Sara Caswell, Kurt Elling, Joel Frahm, Mark Guiliana, Gabriel Kahane, and Becca Stevens, among others.

In listening to the five years of the Brad Mehldau Trio represented in this box set, one hears the unfolding of a new and significant part of modern jazz history, as the end of the 1990s opened the door on the explosive creative renaissance of the music in the 21st century. Nonesuch has compiled the five releases in the Art of the Trio series, as well as an additional disc of unreleased recordings from the same period (1997-2001), offering a serious reconsideration of what has already been accepted as a "next step" for the jazz piano trio's history. On Vol. 1, Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier, and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy intriguingly and seductively begin uttering the first sounds of their new language via Mehldau's originals, such as "Lament for Linus" and "Ron's Place"…

Pianist Brad Mehldau blew up in the mid-’90s playing intense renditions of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and the like, but he’s also famously covered rock and pop fare including Radiohead, Alice in Chains, Neil Young, Rush, and indeed The Beatles. But here is Mehldau going all in, at peak expressive form and technical command, alone with a phenomenal instrument in a superb-sounding hall (Philharmonie de Paris), offering an emotionally invested all-Beatles programme (save for one David Bowie anthem at the end). The song order flows beautifully. Mehldau opens up the forms, cannily orchestrates the melodies, departs in fascinating ways from the harmonies, in the end keeping it all about the song. The emphasis is generally later Beatles (“I Am the Walrus,” “She Said, She Said,” and “Golden Slumbers” are inspired picks), but Mehldau’s boogie-woogie treatment of “I Saw Her Standing There” takes it back—it’s him convincingly flexing pre-bebop stylistic muscles while finding openings for his own creative language to come through.

Largo was recorded in 2001 and is the first record of Mehldau’s that departs from either the piano trio or solo format. It can be seen as the culmination of musical experiences that he gathered while living in Los Angeles, most notably the music he heard at Largo, a club in Hollywood he went to regularly and pays tribute to in the title of the record.

Brad Mehldau's warm, utterly enveloping effort, 2016's Blues and Ballads, finds the pianist leading his trio through a set of well-curated standards and covers. The album follows up his genre-bending 2014 collaboration with electronic musician Mark Guiliana, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, and smartly showcases his return to intimate acoustic jazz. Admittedly, the title, Blues and Ballads, is somewhat misleading, as Mehldau only tackles one actual blues with his jaunty, off-kilter take on Charlie Parker's "Cheryl." Otherwise, the blues of the title is implied more in the earthy lyricism of a handful of ballads. An influential figure in the jazz world since the late '90s, Mehldau has subtly transformed not only the way modern jazz is played, but also the repertoire from which musicians draw inspiration…

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.